UN vote on moratorium on executions wrongly counted: Pak FO

Pakistan said Tuesday that its vote in the UN General Assembly was wrongly counted in favour of a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions.

Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal issued a clarification about the Monday's voting which according to reports went in support of General Assembly resolution.

"Pakistan, in accordance with its consistent policy, voted against the General Assembly resolution calling for a moratorium on execution, with a view to abolishing the death penalty," Faisal said in a tweet.

Amnesty International reported on Monday that Pakistan was among the four UN members that changed their vote to support the resolution. The other three countries were Dominica, Libya and Malaysia.

A total of 121 of the UN's 193 member states voted in favour of the seventh resolution calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

Another 35 voted against the resolution while 32 members abstained.

Faisal said the vote was "inaccurately recorded due to technical issues" and the "Permanent Mission of Pakistan has taken up this matter with the UN Secretariat to put the record straight".

Pakistan followed moratorium on the implementation of capital punishment from 2008 but lifted it after the Peshawar School attack of in December 2014 which killed almost 150 people, mostly school children.

It carried out about 333 executions in 2015, which was one the highest in the world. 77 executions were carried out in 2017, according to Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.