Pak hangs 2 more prisoners; 27 executed since death penalty revival

Pakistan on Friday executed two more prisoners, convicted by anti-terrorism courts, taking to 27 the number of executions carried out since the country resumed the death sentence in December.

Akhtar and Sajid, who had been found guilty in separate offences of murder, were sent to the gallows in Faisalabad central jail on Friday morning.

Akhtar was sentenced to death in 2001 by an anti-terrorism court in Faisalabad for killing a man after he forcibly entered a house in 1999 and attempted to rape a woman.

All his appeals were rejected and the authorities also turned down a compromise with the aggrieved family, terming all the cases of murder and rape as non-pardonable.

Separately, Sajid killed a woman and wounded her husband in 2000 over a personal feud. He was awarded the death sentence by an anti-terrorism court in Faisalabad in 2001.

He also exhausted all appeals.

Pakistan has so far hanged 27 men after reviving the death penalty following the Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar in December 2014 that left over 150 people dead, mostly students.

The PML-N government on Tuesday decided to implement the death penalty in all cases, after initially restarting executions for terrorism offences.

There are more than 8,000 death row prisoners in the country.