ISLAMABAD: A day after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced to lift the ban on death penalties in terrorism cases, the Interior Ministry on Thursday forwarded 120 mercy appeals to the premier for consideration, Express News reported.
After a six-year moratorium on execution of death penalties, Prime Minister Nawaz on Wednesday allowed capital punishment for those who have already been sentenced to death in terrorism cases.
The move came following Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)’s devastating attack on the Army Public School and College in Peshawar on Tuesday which killed 148, people most of them children.
Earlier today, sources in the PM House told The Express Tribune, seventeen convicted terrorists, whose appeals and mercy petitions have been dismissed, will be executed in the next few days.
Sources said the premier has been apprised of the first group of militants to be hanged and that the process will take a few days. “Their death warrants will be issued and their relatives will be called in to have their last meeting with them,” sources added.
Since the 2008 moratorium in Pakistan, only one man was executed in 2012. There are more than 8,000 convicted on death row; however, due to the moratorium their executions could not be carried out.
The prime minister removed the moratorium on terror-related cases, but not on other offenses.
