*** Pakistan hangs Shafqat Hussain | THE DAILY TRIBUNE | KINGDOM OF BAHRAIN

Pakistan hangs Shafqat Hussain

Karachi

 Pakistan yesterday executed a man convicted of killing a child, brushing aside a storm of protests from rights groups that his confession had been extracted by torture and he was a minor at the time of the crime.

 Shafqat Hussain was hanged shortly before dawn at a jail in Karachi for killing a seven-year-old boy in the city in 2004, his brother and a prison official said.

 The case raised grave international concern, drawing protests from the United Nations, as his lawyers and family said he was only 15 at the time of the killing and was tortured into making a false confession.

 In Muzaffarabad, the main town of the Pakistani administered part of Kashmir, his family was distraught.

 "Why did they hang my innocent brother, only because we were poor?" his sister Sumaira Bibi said.

 "My son was innocent, only Allah will prove his innocence in his court," His mother Makhni Begum said.

 "We can't do anything, but they (executioners) will face Allah on the day of judgement."

 United Nations rights experts said Hussain's trial "fell short of international standards" and urged Pakistan not to hang him without investigating the torture claims, as well as his age.

 Hussain's brother Gul Zaman said that in their last meeting, just a few hours before he faced the scaffold, he continued to protest his innocence.

 Zaman said his brother's last words to him were: "I never even touched the boy - I want to let the world know this as I lay down my life."

 After receiving the body, another of Hussain's brothers claimed the hanging had not been carried out properly, saying "half of his neck is separated from his body."

 The Kashmir government made a last-minute plea to President Mamnoon Hussain late on Monday to postpone the execution, but to no avail.

 Hussain was originally due to face the gallows in January but won four stays of execution as his lawyers fought to prove he was under 18 at the time of the offence and could therefore not be executed under Pakistani law.

 An official probe into his age ruled he was an adult at the time of his conviction -- though the results have not been published officially.