Pak hangs 5 more prisoners in latest round of executions

Pakistan's Punjab province today hanged another five convicts, a day after nine men on death row were executed.
All executions were carried out in Lahore, Bahawalpur, Toba Tek Singh, Mianwali, Dera Ghazi Khan districts of the largest province of Punjab.
An official of interior ministry confirmed the executions.
"One convict each was hanged in the jails of the five districts," he said.
All of them were sentenced for murders and their appeals against conviction were rejected by the higher courts, while the president had also rejected their mercy appeals.
Yesterday, nine convicts were hanged in different jails of Punjab, showing that over 260 convicts have been executed since December when a moratorium on death penalty was lifted following the Peshawar carnage.

The executions have come under intense criticism from the UN, the EU and several local and international rights groups.

Pakistan has refused to stop them, saying the executions act as a deterrence to militancy. Most of those hanged since December, however, were not terrorists but convicted of murders.
In March, Pakistan lifted a moratorium on death penalty in all cases where capital punishment has been handed down by a court, expanding an earlier decision to resume executions in terror-related cases in the wake of the Peshawar school carnage.
It is believed that there are more than 8,000 death row prisoners in Pakistan.