INTRODUCTION: A BROKEN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM RESUMES EXECUTIONS On 10 June 2015, Aftab Bahadur was executed. Arrested at the age of fifteen for the murder of a woman and her two children, Aftab protested his innocence to the very end. The only eye witness who testified against Aftab recanted his statement by claiming that he had been coerced by police to provide his damning testimony. In fact, he admitted, that Aftab had never been present at the scene of the crime. The Supreme Court of Pakistan, however, refused to consider the exculpatory evidence stating that a fresh appeal was untimely. Aftab Bahadur therefore, marched to the gallows at the age of 38 after having spent over 22 years on Pakistan’s death row. He was executed on 9 June 2015. Like 160 countries in the world, Pakistan has enacted legislation prohibiting the sentencing and imposition of the death penalty against juvenile offenders - persons who commit crimes before turning eighteen years of age. 4 The Government of Pakistan is, additionally, a party to both the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which categorically prohibit all form of capital punishment for juvenile offenders. However, despite the explicit bar, cases of juvenile offenders such as Aftab Bahadur are far from the exception. On 16 December 2014, the Government of Pakistan lifted a six-year de facto moratorium on the death penalty as a necessary measure to curb terrorism. At the time, official figures estimated the death row population at around 8000.5 With thousands of prisoners at risk, the Government of Pakistan executed over 420 prisoners between the periods December 2014 to December 2016 – out of which only 16 percent were convicted of crimes pertaining to terrorism.6 The figure is even more problematic considering that in as many as 88 percent of terrorism cases there was no link to a terrorist organisation or anything that can reasonably be defined as terrorism.7 As a result of a criminal justice system that violates international human rights standards at each stage of arrest, investigation, trial, sentencing and punishment the death penalty is disproportionately applied to the most vulnerable of Pakistan’s population- the mentally ill, physically disabled and juvenile offenders. 8 Since the moratorium was lifted, at least 6 juvenile offenders have been executed despite credible evidence in support of their juvenility. With an average of 6 executions per week, hundreds remain at risk of imminent execution. 9 Pakistan’s failure to protect juvenile offenders from the death penalty since the resumption of executions has Child Rights International Network (CRIN), The Death Penalty Inhuman Sentencing of Children, https://www.crin.org/en/home/campaigns/inhuman-sentencing/problem/death-penalty (visited January 16,2017) 5 There is currently no confirmed figure for Pakistan’s death row population. In December 2014, the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Law and Justice stated claimed that 8,261 prisoners were on death row in Pakistan, see Zahid Gishkori, 8,261: Hanging in the Balance, EXPRESS TRIBUNE, December,18, 2014, http://tribune.com.pk/story/808727/6261-prisoners-hanging-in-the-balance/ 6 Justice Project Pakistan[JPP], Lifting the moratorium, Two Years on, December, 18, 2016, http://us3.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4d452280bc016abdd37a94bc6&id=a7b923b616&e=[UNIQID] 7 Id. 8 See Justice Project Pakistan & Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, A most Serious Crime: Pakistan’s Unlawful Use of the Death Penalty, 2-3, (2016) [hereinafter JPP-Lowenstein, Death Penalty Report] 9 Id. 4 09 DEATH ROW’S CHILDREN