May 07, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1, 1429

ISLAMABAD, May 6: Fifty-two people on death row in different prisons on Tuesday filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking pardon or commutation as granted recently to a foreigner convicted of terrorism.

Advocate Sardar Mohammad Siddiqui Khan moved the petition under the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court on fundamental rights, on behalf of the condemned prisoners as a pro bono publico (attorney taking cases without compensation to advance a social cause for public good).

According to reports, 5,260 convicts are in 812 death cells in 30 jails in Punjab. Death cells are usually small rooms measuring 9x12 feet, with attached toilets. The height of a cell is approximately three feet. Sometimes as many as 12 inmates are kept in a cell.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in a 2008 report said that over 7,000 prisoners were on death row in different jails in the country. These prisons housed 95,016 detainees, with the authorised capacity of 40,825.

The petition was filed after Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar recently suggested to Advocate Sardar appearing in a case to move an application to get relief for the condemned prisoners who, after the confirmation of death sentences, had been kept in death cells for the past eight to 15 years. And their fate, either to be acquitted, death sentence changed to life imprisonment or to be executed, hangs in the balance.

The petitioners sought an immediate shifting of the condemned prisoners from death cells to ordinary prisons and said that the pending cases be adjudicated expeditiously.

They also prayed for the grant of benefit under Article 45 of the Constitution which empowered the president to pardon, reprieve, remit, suspend or commute any sentence passed by any court. They said that prisoners who had remained in death cells for over eight years should be acquitted or their capital sentence be converted into life imprisonment.