Don't execute alleged child offender, Pakistan told

The Pakistan government should immediately halt the apparent pending execution of an alleged child offender and commute his sentence, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

News reports suggest that Shafqat Hussain, who was 14 or 15 when sentenced in 2004 for kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old boy, is among the several hundred prisoners facing imminent execution in Pakistan.

The Britain-based human rights group Reprieve issued a statement alleging that security forces in Pakistan's Sindh province had tortured Hussain into confessing to the crime.

"Sending child offenders to the gallows is a monstrous government response to the vicious Peshawar school attack," said Phelim Kine of Human Rights Watch said.

"The government's apparent aim to execute someone for crimes allegedly committed as a child is an affront to basic decency as well as a violation of children's rights."

Hussain's looming execution follows the government's decision Dec 16 to rescind a four year unofficial death penalty moratorium for non-military personnel "in terrorism related cases".

That decision was an explicit government reaction to the Dec 16 attack by the Pakistani Taliban splinter group Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) on a school in Peshawar that left 148 people dead - almost all children.

The government has already executed six convicted militants in Punjab.