Pakistan executes another death-row prisoner

Pakistan today hanged another prisoner in Punjab province convicted for raping and murdering an eight-year-old girl, taking to 101 the number of executions since the country reversed the self-imposed moratorium on the death penalty in December.
Abdul Ghafoor, convicted of raping and killing the girl in 1991, was hanged to death in Vehari District Jail.
Ghafoor was executed after Hussain rejected his clemency plea, ARY news reported.
Ghafoor became the 101th death-row prisoner to be executed since a moratorium on death penalty was lifted by Pakistan in December last year.
Pakistan resumed executions on December 17, 2014, a day after a Taliban attack on an army school in Peshawar that killed more than 150 people, mostly children.

There are more than 8,000 death row prisoners in the country.

Initially executions were limited to terrorism offences but on March 10 the government decided to implement death penalty in all cases following the Peshawar school massacre in December.
The moratorium on executions had been in place since a democratic government took power from a military ruler in 2008.
Supporters of the execution argue that it is the only option to deal with the scourge of militancy but human rights group are highly critical of it.
Rights groups say many convictions are highly unreliable in Pakistan where criminal justice system barely functions and torture has often been used to extract confessions.