An ambulance arrives to transport the bodies of convicted militants who were hanged in the central jail, in Multan, on Wednesday.
AFP/Islamabad
Pakistan on Wednesday hanged two men sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court, taking the number of executions to nine since the country lifted a moratorium on capital punishment after last month's Taliban school massacre.
The convicts, Ghulam Shabbir and Ahmed Ali (alias Sheesh Naag), were reportedly members of banned sectarian militant outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
The two were sentenced to death in 2002 by an anti-terrorism court - Shabbir for killing a senior police official and his driver, and Ali for killing three people.
They were hanged in the southern city of Multan early Wednesday.
"Two men convicted for murders, Ghulam Shabbir and Ahmed Ali, were hanged till death today," Saeedullah Gondal, superintendent of the jail where the executions took place, told AFP.
"Their bodies were handed over to their families."
Pakistan last month lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty in terror cases in the wake of the Taliban's horrific massacre at an army-run school in the city of Peshawar.
The attack on December 16 left 150 people dead, the vast majority of them children.
Pakistani officials have said they plan to hang 500 convicts in the coming weeks, drawing protest from international human rights campaigners.
Pakistan's parliament on Tuesday approved the setting up of military courts to hear terrorism-related cases in a bid to speed up hearings.
A two-judge panel has now suspended Islamabad High Court's interim order and dire
The country's notoriously slow civil court procedures often delays justice for years.
On Tuesday, authorities halted the death sentence of Shafqat Hussain, who was convicted of murdering a seven-year-old boy in 2004 when he was just 15, following an outcry from rights groups.
Mumbai attacks 'mastermind' detained again
Pakistan's Supreme Court on Wednesday reimposed a detention order on the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, court officials said, the latest in a tussle over his custody that has strained ties with India.
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who is accused over the terror siege in India's commercial capital, was granted bail on December 18 by an anti-terror court but authorities later detained him under a public order law, which in turn was then suspended by the Islamabad High Court on December 29.
cted it to hear the case again from January 12, a court official said.
The judges ruled that the high court did not hear the arguments of federal government and suspended Lakhvi's detention orders in haste, the official said.
The Mumbai attacks left 166 people dead and were blamed on banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). India has long seethed at Pakistan's failure either to hand over or prosecute those accused of planning and organising the violence.
