KARACHI: A condemned prisoner belonging to the banned militant outfit of the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan convicted of killing a former police officer and his son is set to be sent to the gallows in the early hours of Thursday at the Karachi central prison.

Mohammad Saeed was sentenced to death by an antiterrorism court in April 2001 for murdering retired deputy superintendent of police Syed Sabir Hussain Shah and his young son Syed Abid Hussain Shah in an ambush near the Malir city railway crossing.

The appeals of the convict against capital punishment were dismissed by the higher judiciary. The president also turned down his mercy petition.

On a request of the jail authorities, the trial court had issued a black warrant on Jan 3 for the execution of death row prisoner and asked the jail officials to carry out the hanging under the supervision of a judicial magistrate on Jan 15 at 6:30am.

A jail official said they had arranged the last meeting of the death row convict with his family while all other arrangements had also been finalised for the hanging of the militant on Thursday. A district and sessions judge appointed a judicial magistrate to supervise the execution, he said, adding that the convict belonged to proscribed extremist group Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan.

It will be the second hanging at the prison after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted a moratorium on executions on Dec 17 in the wake of the devastating attack on Army Public School in Peshawar. Earlier on Jan 13, Behram Khan was hanged for killing a lawyer in 2003.

Behram’s was the first hanging at the central prison since Feb 20, 2008 when Javed Malik was hanged for killing one Amir Kakar in Gulshan-i-Iqbal while extorting money from him in 1997.

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play