Pakistan executes 17 condemned prisoner

Seventeen condemned prisoners were executed in various jails in Pakistan on Tuesday, which marks the higgest number of executions in the country since the moratorium on capital punishment was lifted.

In Central Jail in Gujranwala, three convicts were hanged.

In Faisalabad also, three convicts were executed for mudrders they had committed.

In Sialkot Jail, two convicts were sent to the gallows for the gang-rape of a minor in Qila Kalarwala in 1999. Their death warrants were issued last week by a special anti-terrorism court in Gujranwala.

One convicted prisoner was hanged in Multan's Central Jail for committing a murder in 2000 whereas in Sahiwal's Central Jail a convict was hanged for murdering a man in 1998.

Meanwhile, one prisoner was hanged in Gujrat district jail for the murder of a man in 1995.

In Lahore's Kot Lakhpat Jail, two convicts were executed whereas in Rawalpindi's Adiala Jail, three were sent to the gallows, another convict was hanged in Quetta's Mach jail.

Most of the executions were for individual murders the convicts had commitgted.

Earlier, executions were resumed for terrorism offences only in the wake of a Taliban massacre at an army-run school in Peshawar, which claimed the lives of more than 140 people, mostly school children, on December 16, 2014.

The United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on Pakistan to re-impose its moratorium on the death penalty.