Mother of paraplegic death row inmate pleads for pardon in Pakistan

Nusrat Perveen,the mother of paraplegic inmate Abdul Basit on death row in Pakistan convicted of murdering a man in a financial dispute has urged President Mamnoon Hussain for his pardon.

Basit, 43, since contracting meningitis in prison in 2010 has been paralysed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair. He has been on death row since 2009.

Perveen said that the President had on January ordered authorities to halt the execution of her son Abdul Basit , hours before he was to be hanged but the stay of execution order has now expired.

She said that her son had lost a lot of weight and looked skeletal as she met him a prison in Faisalabad city.

"I wept and cried on seeing him in fragile health," she said. "My son is like a dead man already, do they want to hang a dead man?," the Guardian quoted her as saying.

However, the jail officials said that they were initiating a new process to obtain a death warrant for Basit's execution.

Pakistan's Supreme Court had last year said that Basit's execution must comply with the country's prison rules governing execution procedures. However, there is no rule that contain any provisions for the hanging of prisoners in wheelchairs.

Maya Foa, Director at the anti-death penalty NGO Reprieve, expressed her concern about the authorities were gearing up to try and execute Basit.

She urged that international community should urgently call on Hussain to halt "this cruel spectacle."

Basit was given a stay of execution in September 2015 after officials remained uncertain on how a man who couldn't stand without any support could be hanged. Following that plans to execute him was again postponed in November last year.