Pakistan to execute eight terror convicts

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court has issued death warrants against eight terror convicts, weeks after the government lifted a self-imposed moratorium on death penalty in terror related cases following the brazen Peshawar school attack.

The court issued warrants for the hanging of four Lashkar-i-Jhangvi militants -- Mohammad Shahid Hanif, Mohammad Talha Hussain, Khalil Ahmed and Mohammad Saeed -- in two sectarian killing cases, the Dawn reported.

Hanif, Hussain and Ahmed were sentenced to death in April 2002 for killing a defence ministry official in July 2001 while Saeed was awarded death sentence in April 2001 for murdering a retired deputy superintendent of police and his young son.

The court also issued death warrant against an al Qaeda member Zulfikar Ali who sentenced in March 2004 for the killing of two policemen near the US Consulate General in Karachi in February 2003.

The other two convicts were Behram Khan, guilty of killing an advocate in April 2003 and Shafqat Hussain sentenced in June 2003 for killing a minor boy after kidnapping him.

Another convict Ahmed Ali, who was sentenced in 1998 for killing three men, will be hanged on January 7.

The convicts will be hanged on January 13, 14 and 15. Pakistan ended its six-years-old moratorium on the death penalty in terror cases last month after the horrific terror attack on an army-run school in Peshawar killed 150 people, mostly children.

Seven convicts have been hanged so far after the Nawaz Sharif-led government lifted the moratorium.