Pakistan executes death-row prisoner

Pakistan today hanged a death- row prisoner convicted of killing a man over an old rivalry, taking to 62 the number of executions carried out since the country resumed the death sentence in December.
Muhammad Afzal was executed in Faisalabad's Central Jail early today after being on death row for around two decades.
Afzal had shot dead a man in 1995 and was convicted in the same year. His appeals against sentence were rejected by the High Court and the Supreme Court.
Pakistan lifted a moratorium on death penalty in all cases where capital punishment has been handed down by a court on March 10, expanding an earlier decision to resume executions in terror-related cases following the Peshawar school massacre in December last year that killed more than 150 people, mostly children.

There are more than 8,000 death row prisoners in the country.
The United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have urged Pakistan government to re-impose the moratorium on the death penalty.