Pakistan set to hang disabled death row convict

Abdul Basit, 43, convicted of murder in 2009 developed tuberculosis while in prison, which left him paralysed from the waist down.

A disabled man in Pakistan faces the prospect of being hanged for murder - from his wheelchair as he is unable to mount the scaffold, UK's The Telegraph reported this week.
In a story that has gone viral since it went online on August 20, The Telegraph reported that prisoner Abdul Basit, 43, convicted of murder in 2009 developed tuberculosis while in prison, which left him paralysed from the waist down.
Basit's legal team at Justice Project Pakistan got a stay on the execution after a 'Black Warrant' was issued for his execution on July 29. A final hearing on August 25 will now decide whether to go ahead with the procedure.
The lawyers have also issued a mercy plea to the President of Pakistan, Mamnoon Hussain, stating that hanging a wheelchair-bound person is a violation of its own prison rules.
"Given that the condemned prisoner is unable to use his lower body to support his own weight and unable to stand, it is not possible to accurately measure the length of rope required for his hanging," the Telegraph quoted what they had written.
"Consequently, no provision can be safely made for the accurate measurement of the rope that would hang him and to proceed with an inaccurately-measured length of rope would place him at risk of an appalling death."
The Telegraph also quoted a few extracts from the prison handbook, stipulating that prisoners must be able to 'stand' on the scaffold in order to be hanged.
Pakistan has carried out a series of executions after lifting the moratorium in response to a Taleban attack on a school in Peshawar, that claimed the lives of more than a 100 children.
Nearly 200 convicts, including militants and terrorists, have been hanged since December 2014.
Quoting the head of legal charity, Reprieve's death penalty team, Maya Foa warned Basit's hanging would be a "cruel and violent spectacle".
She further said: "The decision to go ahead with the hanging of a severely disabled man would mark a new low for the Pakistani justice system.
"Abdul Basit contracted tubercular meningitis while imprisoned; authorities failed to provide proper medical assistance and as a result, his illness worsened, leaving him entirely paralysed from the waist down."
This is the second death row case, in Pakistan, to make headlines globally, after a young man, Shafqat Hussain, was hanged earlier this month in a murder case. His legal team and human rights group claiming a confession was forced out of him when he was 14, the age when he allegedly committed the murder.
Should Basit's hanging go ahead, it is understood to be the first case in Pakistan's history of a state execution of a wheelchair-bound convict.
But this won't be the first time a disabled person was executed. A similar incident occurred in 1993 in the United States where an "extremely disabled" killer was put to death in a Virginia prison.
Charles Stamper, 39, who suffered spinal injuries after a fight in prison, used leg braces and a walker to take his final steps to the electric chair.

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