Pak PM asks President to reject mercy pleas of five convicts

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today asked President Mamnoon Hussain to reject the mercy petitions of five death-row prisoners, convicted of targeted killings.

Sharif, in a letter, called on President Hussain to reject appeals of Muhammad Ikramul Haq, Ahmed Ali, Mohammad Tayyab, Ghulam Shabbir and Zulfiqar Ali, officials said.

An official of the President House said the mercy pleas were submitted by the convicts.

The five prisoners, all from Karachi, were convicted of target killings.

Pakistan lifted moratorium on capital punishment a day after Taliban militants killed 150 people, most of them children, in an attack on a military-run school in Peshawar on December 16.
 

The moratorium on the death penalty was imposed by former president Asif Ali Zardari in 2008.

So far, seven convicts have been executed, including those complicit in the attack on former military dictator Pervez Musharraf.