500 terrorists face death as war declared
PAKISTAN said yesterday that it planned to execute an estimated 500 Islamist terrorists as part of a ‘‘decisive war’’ against the Taliban in response to the massacre of 133 children at a school last week.
After the Peshawar school attack, Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister, ended the six-year moratorium on the death penalty, reinstating it for terrorismrelated cases.
He has pledged an all-out war to rid the country of the Taliban and al Qaedalinked groups responsible for a series of attacks on schools, churches and members of the Shia Muslim minority.
The army’s air and land offensive against Taliban bases in North Waziristan will be expanded to include operations against terrorists in villages and cities throughout Pakistan. ‘‘There will be a decisive war against terrorists now,’’ he said.
Earlier, Nisar Ali Khan, his interior minister, said: ‘‘Around 500 prisoners convicted on terrorism-related charges will be executed in the next two to three weeks. The Interior Ministry has cleared these prisoners for execution and their mercy petitions have already been rejected by the president.’’
Six men convicted of terrorist offences have been hanged already, one for a 2009 attack on the Pakistan army headquarters, in which nine soldiers and two civilians were killed.
The other five were involved in the failed assassination plot against the for- mer dictator General Pervez Musharraf.
The government’s decision to reinstate capital punishment has been widely welcomed by a public that has tired of soft responses to terrorist advances, but it has been strongly criticised by human rights groups.
Sarah Belal, the head of Justice Project Pakistan, a human rights organisation, said: ‘‘Our research shows that the government is clueless on who is an actual terrorist on death row and who isn’t.’’
According to a report by the organisation, 80 per cent of those on death row have not committed acts of terrorism but were wrongly convicted.
The decision on executions came as Pakistan and Afghanistan showed rare signs of military co-operation. Afghan security forces killed 21 insurgents in a raid in Kunar province, where the Pakistan Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah – the man believed to be responsible for the Peshawar massacre – is thought to be hiding.