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| Abdul Basit: Pakistan delays hanging of disabled man | Abdul Basit: Pakistan delays hanging of disabled man |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The planned hanging of a paraplegic prisoner in Pakistan has been delayed, his lawyer has said. | The planned hanging of a paraplegic prisoner in Pakistan has been delayed, his lawyer has said. |
| Abdul Basit could not be hanged in compliance with the jail manual because he is in a wheelchair, a magistrate said when ordering the postponement. | Abdul Basit could not be hanged in compliance with the jail manual because he is in a wheelchair, a magistrate said when ordering the postponement. |
| Pakistan's prison guidelines require that a prisoner stand on the gallows. | Pakistan's prison guidelines require that a prisoner stand on the gallows. |
| Rights groups have said that hanging a handicapped person would constitute cruel and degrading treatment. | Rights groups have said that hanging a handicapped person would constitute cruel and degrading treatment. |
| Abdul Basit, 43, is paralysed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair after becoming ill in prison. | Abdul Basit, 43, is paralysed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair after becoming ill in prison. |
| Mercy petition | |
| Pakistan reintroduced the death penalty in December 2014 and has hanged 239 people since. | |
| At the time, the government said it was a measure to combat terrorism after the Taliban massacred more than 150 people, most of them children, in a Peshawar school. | |
| The condemned man was convicted six years ago of murder and was to have been hanged in Lahore last month - but that was postponed. | |
| A court then ordered the jail authorities to go ahead with the hanging, even though his mercy petition filed on 22 July before the president is still pending. It is unclear if any time limit was imposed on the most recent postponement. | |
| Campaigners say that prison guidelines do not cover the hanging of a paralysed person. | |
| "[The] jail manual only provides for hanging as a method of execution, and lays down methods to calculate the right length of rope to ensure that hanging does not lead to protracted strangulation," Wassam Waheed, a spokesman for Justice Project Pakistan (JPP) told the BBC. | |
| "The rules presume that the convict [can] walk up to the gallows, which is not possible in Abdul Basit's case." | |
| A trial court issued a death warrant against Abdul Basit on Friday and ordered jail authorities to hang him on 22 September. | |
| Both the Supreme Court and the Lahore High Court have given their consent to the execution. | |
| Rights groups say that there is a danger that the hanging could go wrong and end up being a breach of the prisoner's dignity - which is protected by Pakistani laws. | |
| Abdul Basit | |
| In a statement on Sunday the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) described the court order to hang Abdul Basit as an offence "against all norms of civilised justice" which would raise awkward questions about the Pakistani justice system and "indict the Pakistani state and society as brutal entities". | |
| The HRCP also urged the president to stay the execution and grant him a reprieve. | |
| Pakistan has the world's largest number of death row inmates, with more than 8,000 people reported to be awaiting execution. | |
| It is on course to have one of the highest rates of executions in the world. | |
| Executions around the world | |
| Read more: | |
| What is behind Pakistan's dramatic rise in executions? | |
| The Pakistani hangman and his family tradition |