Pakistan hangs 'teen' convict
Pakistan yesterday executed a man convicted of killing a child, brushing aside a storm of protests from rights groups that his confession had been extracted by torture and he was a minor at the time of the crime.
Shafqat Hussain was hanged shortly before dawn at a jail in Karachi for killing a seven-year-old boy in the city in 2004, his brother and a prison official told AFP.
The case raised grave international concern, drawing protests from the United Nations, as his lawyers and family said he was only 15 at the time of the killing and was tortured into making a false confession.
In Muzaffarabad, the main town of the Pakistani administered part of Kashmir, his family was distraught.
"Why did they hang my innocent brother, only because we were poor?" said his sister Sumaira Bibi, beating her chest and weeping.
His mother Makhni Begum, looked glassy-eyed, stunned by the news of the execution after seeing her son reprieved from the gallows four times since January.
"We can't do anything but they (executioners) will face Allah on the day of judgement," she said.
United Nations rights experts said Hussain's trial "fell short of international standards" and urged Pakistan not to hang him without investigating the torture claims, as well as his age.
Hussain was originally due to face the gallows in January but won four stays of execution as his lawyers fought to prove he was under 18 at the time of the offence and could therefore not be executed under Pakistani law.
An official probe into his age ruled he was an adult at the time of his conviction -- though the results have not been published officially.
British anti-death penalty campaign group Reprieve said the hanging represented "all that is wrong with Pakistan's race to the gallows", while Amnesty International accused the government of "callous indifference" to human life.
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