ATC issues black warrant against Pakistani man

A Pakistani man who was a juvenile when he killed a seven-year-old boy here in 2004 will be executed next week.
Shafqat Hussain, now 23, will be executed on March 19, according to a black warrant issued by a anti-terrorism court in Karachi.
14-year-old Hussain was arrested and sentenced to death in 2004 for kidnapping and killing a boy from an apartment building in Karachi where he was working as a guard.
His murder charge was reduced to "involuntary manslaughter" on appeal, but the terrorism charges against him were not quashed.
Officials of the Karachi Central Prison asked the trial court yesterday to issue the fresh black warrant for the hanging of the death row prisoner since the government had lifted an interim stay against his execution, Dawn reported.

The appeals and mercy petition of the condemned prisoner had already been rejected by the superior judiciary and the presidency, respectively, it said.

The death row prisoner has been dodging death for the past many years since implementation on his black warrants, repeatedly issued by the trial court, was stayed as the Pakistan Peoples Party government had placed a moratorium on executions after coming into power in 2008.
The counsel for the death row prisoner had petitioned the Sindh High Court against his possible hanging stating that he was wrongly convicted as a juvenile in the kidnapping and murder case.

However, earlier this week, Pakistan lifted its moratorium on the death penalty in all capital cases, after initially restarting executions for terrorism offences in the wake of attack by Taliban on the Army Public school in Peshawar.