Pakistan rejected Russia's plea to not execute citizen

Pakistan turned down Russia's request to postpone the execution of its citizen Akhlaque Ahmed, who was hanged to death in Faisalabad Sunday.

"Russia repeatedly approached Pakistani authorities with a plea to reconsider the sentence for Akhlaque," said a statement issued by the Russian embassy in Islamabad Sunday, according to the Dawn online.

Russia said that it had wanted the death sentence of Akhlaque Ahmed to be postponed on humanitarian grounds.

Russian citizen Akhlaque, who also had a Pakistani citizenship, was sentenced to death in 2005 by a military court for his involvement in an assassination attempt on the former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in 2003.

Akhlaque was among the four convicts hanged to death Sunday for being involved in the attack on the former Pakistan president 11 years ago.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had lifted the moratorium on death penalty after terrorists attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar Dec 16, killing nearly 150 people, most of them children.

The Russian embassy and Akhlaque's lawyers had been making efforts to postpone his death sentence, according to reports.