Islamabad, Sept 21(ANI): Human rights groups have called on China to stop the execution of Pakistani national Zahid Husain Shah, who has been convicted of drug smuggling, and also urged Islamabad to come forward and save his life.
Shah, 35, who was arrested in 2008 and sentenced to death in 2010, is due to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday lunchtime in Pakistan - late afternoon in China, the BBC reports.
Shah's family members have appealed to the government to engage with China to postpone the execution, but it has refused to comment on the case.
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) said that the death penalty could be turned into life sentence with a single call from Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari.
"It is the primary duty of the Pakistan government to come forward and save the life of any Pakistani citizen who is made a victim because of the wrong advice from his lawyer and the sheer negligence of staff of the Pakistan embassy in Beijing," the AHRC said in a statement.
Human rights group Amnesty International has called for the Pakistan Government to provide Shah with "urgent additional consular assistance."
"Executing someone for drug related offences violates internationally accepted standards for imposing the death penalty," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty's Asia-Pacific director.
Amnesty argues that no one sentenced to death receives a fair trial in China, where thousands of executions for drug trafficking take place every year, more than the rest of the world combined, the report said.
Shah's cousin, Tasneem Fatima, is in Shanghai to lobby the Pakistani embassy. She said that her cousin did not realise at the time of the crime that he was doing anything wrong, and was "trying to help out other Pakistanis" without knowing that he was in fact trafficking drugs. (ANI)
|
|
Read More: Ali
Comments:
