NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, 20 March 2008 — Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf granted a one-month stay in the execution of a convicted Indian spy who was due to be hanged on April 1, officials said yesterday.
The Indian man, Sarabjit Singh, has spent 18 years on death row.
Prison official Javed Latif told The Associated Press that Sarabjit has been told about the postponement but he would not say what the prisoner’s reaction was.
Indian High Commission spokesman Sanjay Mathur in Islamabad confirmed that news of the stay has been “informally communicated” to the diplomatic mission. “The execution has been deferred until April 30,” he told AP.
Sarabjit was arrested in 1990 near the India-Pakistan border. He was convicted for spying as well as carrying out four bombings that killed 14 people and injured dozens more in Lahore and Faisalabad.
On Tuesday, Pakistan’s caretaker Human Rights Minister Ansar Burney urged Musharraf to let Sarabjit live out his days in jail, saying that to execute him after so long on death row would amount to a double punishment and “a murder of human rights.”
In New Delhi, Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee yesterday called the stay of execution for Sarabjit a “partial success.”
“I am happy to inform the house (lower house of Indian parliament) that the high commissioner of India in Islamabad informed a little while ago that President Pervez Musharraf has stayed the execution of Sarabjit Singh until April 30,” Pranab said.
“The Indian government had been negotiating with the Pakistani government. Staying of Sarabjit’s execution is a partial success. The government is continuing its efforts to secure the life of Sarabjit Singh,” Pranab said.
On Tuesday, Pakistan’s Foreign Office received India’s request to reconsider the death penalty for Sarabjit, after Musharraf rejected his clemency petition last month.
While making its appeal for sparing Sarabjit, India had also said that impression about him being executed in retaliation for death of a Pakistani in Indian custody will “impinge on the positive atmosphere” between the two countries.
Pakistani national Khalid Mehmood, arrested in India in May 2006, died in Indian jail on Feb. 12. India’s stand is that he died of some illness and not due to police torture.
Last month, Burney successfully petitioned Musharraf to pardon an Indian man on humanitarian grounds after he had spent 35 years in jail for alleged espionage.
The return home to India of Kashmir Singh was hailed as a sign of improving relations between the two South Asian neighbors, who have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947.
However, the mood soured when Kashmir Singh acknowledged that his protestations of innocence had been a ruse and that he had indeed been spying for India.
Meanwhile, a fast track court in Uttar Pradesh ordered the release yesterday of Pakistani national Jamal Qureshi. He had come to India in October 2005 and was jailed within 10 days on charges of possessing fake currency note. The Rs.100 bill, handed by Qureshi to a police officer for getting his visa extended, turned out to be fake. An FIR was registered against him and he was sent to jail. Though he was released on bail, he had to stay in India for trial.
— With input from agencies
