Daily Times

ISLAMABAD/LAHORE: Using his discretionary powers, President Mamnoon Hussain on Tuesday suspended the execution of Abdul Basit, a paraplegic prisoner who was on death row and scheduled to be hanged today at 6:30am.

The president suspended the execution for a period of two months. He also ordered the authorities concerned to ascertain the real facts about the health condition of the prisoner.

The president observed that the standards of human rights should be maintained at all costs, said a press release issued by his office.

Earlier in the day, a division bench of the Lahore High Court dismissed a petition against execution of a paralysed condemned prisoner.

Nusrat Parveen, mother of the convict, had filed a petition challenging issue of death warrants of her son by a Sessions court in Faisalabad.

Abdul Basit, 43, was convicted and sentenced to death for killing Asif Nadeem of Okara in 2009.

Petitioner’s counsel submitted that Basit was awarded death sentence in year 2009 on charge of murdering Asif Nadeem. During prison in 2010, he suffered tubercular meningitis, which left him paralysed from the waist down.

Counsel said that due to his disease, Basit now could not even stand on his legs and was on the wheelchair. She asserted that the execution of a paralysed man would constitute cruel and unusual punishment, violating fundamental right to human dignity enshrined in the constitution.

She said that execution of a paralysed man would be cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that was prohibited under Islamic and international laws. She said that the convict had already suffered unusual punishment and to try to execute him now would be a form of ‘double punishment’.