PESHAWAR: Convict seeks clemency, claims he is juvenile
By Bureau Report
PESHAWAR, May 17: An offender awaiting execution by the death penalty for the last six years at Faisalabad central prison has requested the President and Chief Justice of Pakistan to order his medical examination, as he was a juvenile offender and his age was not properly recorded by the trial court.
The offender Jawed Khan, resident of Shrengal Tehsil in Upper Dir district, was handed the death sentence along with two other persons by an anti-terrorism court in Faisalabad on Feb 20, 1998, after being charged in a murder case registered at the police station in Peoples Colony, Faisalabad, on July 29, 1996.
The convict has exhausted all his legal options and now his mercy petition has been pending before the president of Pakistan. His appeal was first dismissed by the Lahore High Court on Mar 20, 2001, and then by the Supreme Court on Nov 8, 2001.
His counsel had not raised the question of his age with the trial courts and the appellants court. Last year he filed an application before the Faisalabad district and sessions judge raising the issue of his age.
His father Akhter Jan produced photocopies copies of his school leaving and birth certificates according to which he was born on April 3, 1982, and at the time the crime was committed his age was about 15 years.
The applicant claimed that on Dec 13, 2001, the President of Pakistan had issued a notification and had commuted death sentences awarded to all the juvenile offenders to life imprisonment. He added that as his age was not properly recorded by the trial court, therefore the benefit of that notification could not be extended to him.
The sessions judge dismissed his application on March 11, observing that the applicant had produced photocopies of the school leaving and birth certificates which appeared to be fictitious.
Moreover, the court ruled that the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance was promulgated in 2000, but the applicant had not raised the issue before both the High Court and the Supreme Court which dismissed his appeals in 2001.
Akhter Jan, father of the convict, told Dawn that Shrengal Tehsil was a backward and far-flung area where there was no practice of obtaining birth certificates after the birth of children. He added that they obtained the certificate after conviction of his son and due to the same reason the court believed that it might be fictitious.
The deputy national coordinator of SPARC (Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child), Arshad Mahmood, told Dawn that confusion persisted about the age of a number of offenders awaiting the death penalty across the country. He said that it may be wise on the part of government to conduct bone ossification tests of all such offenders who claim to have been juveniles.
