Pakistan to end death penalty moratorium in terror cases: PM's office

ISLAMABAD - Agence France-Presse

People attend funeral of a student killed in Tuesday's Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014. AP Photo

Pakistan is to end its moratorium on the death penalty in terror-related cases, the prime minister's office announced Dec. 17, a day after Taliban militants killed 141 people in an attack on a school.
     
The assault on the army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar, the deadliest terror attack in Pakistan's history, has triggered widespread revulsion.
      
Political and military leaders have vowed to wipe out the homegrown Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands of ordinary Pakistanis in recent years.
      
"The prime minister has approved abolishment of moratorium on the execution of death penalty in terrorism-related cases," an official from Sharif's office said.
      
Hanging remains on the Pakistani statute book and judges continue to pass the death sentence, but a de facto moratorium on civilian executions has been in place since 2008.
      
Only one person has been executed since then, a soldier convicted by a court martial and hanged in November 2012.
      
Rights campaign group Amnesty International estimates that Pakistan has more than 8,000 prisoners on death row, most of whom have exhausted the appeals process.