ISLAMABAD/FAISALABAD: Mohammad Aqeel alias Dr Usman — the lone surviving member of a terrorist squad that attacked the military’s General Headquarters — and Arshad Mehmood, one of the men accused of trying to assassinate former military ruler retired General Pervez Musharraf, were executed on Friday night.

The hangings, carried out in the Faisalabad district jail, were the first death sentences carried out after the government ended a six-year moratorium on executions on Wednesday, in response to the Peshawar tragedy. In response, Taliban groups released messages vowing revenge for the deaths of their comrades-in-arms.

Both men had previously served in the army and were convicted and sentenced to death by the military’s Field General Court Martial, Aqeel in 2011 and Arshad in 2005.

More death sentences likely to be carried out today

Chief of Army Staff Gen Raheel Sharif had signed their death warrants on Thursday, along with four others also involved in the attack on former President Musharraf.

Both men were under detention at the Faisalabad central jail and were shifted to the district jail under tight security on Friday evening. The route for the prisoners’ transfer was sealed and a heavy police contingent was deployed along the road.

Before their sentence was carried out, both men were examined by a doctor and presented before a magistrate. An official who was present during the execution told Dawn that both men were trembling as they walked towards the gallows. “They were pale and their breathing was laboured,” the official said, adding that Aqeel also repeatedly begged for mercy.

Prison officials also confirmed that both men were allowed to meet their families for the last time. The families were taken from their home in Kahuta to Faisalabad in the early hours of Friday morning amid tight security. In a departure from the established practice of carrying out executions at the crack of dawn, the two hangings were carried out shortly after 9pm.

Aqeel was convicted and sentenced to death in August 2011 for the Oct 10, 2009 brazen attack on the GHQ, which involved nine other militants, all of whom were killed during the attack. The military court had handed down varying jail sentences to his abettors. The six others convicted in the case included former military man Imran Siddiq and five civilians; Khaliqur Rehman, Mohammad Usman, Wajid Ali, Mohammad Adnan and Tahir Shafiq.

Aqeel had joined the Harkatul Jihad Al-Islami (HuJI) in 1999 before travelling to Afghanistan and joining the Taliban. He returned after 9/11 and joined the Army Medical Corps as a nursing assistant. During his military service, he maintained contacts with militant groups and deserted in 2005 to return to HuJI. There, he remained associated with Ilyas Kashmiri, who inducted him into the TTP’s Amjad Farooqi group, commonly known as the Punjabi Taliban. He also had links with the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) and Jaish-i-Muhammad.

Arshad Mehmood was convicted alongside five other civilians, who were also sentenced to death in the case; Zubair Ahmed, Rasheed Qureshi, Ghulam Sarwar Bhatti and Russian citizen Akhlaq Ahmed.

The last execution, before the moratorium was enforced, took place in November 2008. The six-year-long moratorium was, however, only for civilians as a soldier, Muhammed Hussain, was hanged in Mianwali jail on November 14, 2012.

The sentences of the four remaining death row convicts, whose death warrants have already been signed by the COAS, may be carried out some time on Saturday.

Last ditch efforts

The men sentenced to death for the assassination attempt on Gen Musharraf had written to the COAS, Air Headquarters, Supreme Court and Defence Ministry through their lawyer Malik Mohammad Akram in a bid to stay their execution, reminding them that all five had appeals still pending before the apex court.

The letter, titled ‘Issuance of Black Warrants for Execution of Death Sentence’, requested the authorities to “pend the execution of sentence of these convicts till the decision of the Supreme Court”.

They had sought a review of their cases after the Supreme Court in 2013 quashed the death sentences awarded to two other convicts in the same case, Rana Naveed and Amir Sohail. The two were initially given prison sentences by a military court, but the punishment was later enhanced to death sentence by the Army Court of Appeal.

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2014