Plea of terror convict rejected

Published July 25, 2007

LAHORE, July 24: Justice Syed Asghar Haider of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday rejected writ petition of a terror convict for staying his execution and re-hearing his case. Javed Khan from Upper Dir, NWFP, is to be executed on Wednesday (today) in Faisalabad jail.

He was handed down death by an anti-terrorism court in February, 1998. His appeals against the conviction were rejected by the LHC and the Supreme Court in March 2001 and November 2001, respectively.

In 2004, he again filed an appeal for commuting his death sentence to life term on the basis of his being juvenile at the time of occurrence of the offence. He was 14 years, four months and 26 days old at that time.

However, this plea too was rejected in April 2004.

He filed a new petition, but the court observed that the grounds pleaded in the petition were the same (seeking juvenile treatment) which had earlier been rejected.

CHILDREN CASE: The LHC on Tuesday directed police to coordinate with TV artiste Sofia Mirza for the recovery of her daughters from her husband and adjourned the case for Aug 6.

The court observed that bank accounts of Omar Farooq would be frozen after the petitioner would file a formal application in this regard.