Pakistan court delays paraplegic's execution

AFP, LAHORE: Pakistan has postponed the execution of a paraplegic death row convict following appeals by human rights groups, officials said Tuesday.
Abdul Basit, 43, who was convicted of murder in 2009, contracted tubercular meningitis in 2010 while in prison which left him paralysed from the waist down, according to rights groups and jail officials.
Basit was due to be hanged on Tuesday, but a court delayed the execution after Justice Project Pakistan, the human rights law firm handling his case, raised concerns about how the wheelchair-bound man would mount the scaffold. "The hanging has been postponed. A magistrate in the morning ordered the postponement.”

 

Pakistan court delays paraplegics execution

AFP, LAHORE: Pakistan has postponed the execution of a paraplegic death row convict following appeals by human rights groups, officials said Tuesday. Abdul Basit, 43, who was convicted of murder in 2009, contracted tubercular meningitis in 2010 while in prison which left him paralysed from the waist down, according to rights groups and jail officials. Basit was due to be hanged on Tuesday, but a court delayed the execution after Justice Project Pakistan, the human rights law firm handling his case, raised concerns about how the wheelchair-bound man would mount the scaffold. The hanging has been postponed. A magistrate in the morning ordered the postponement.