ISLAMABAD: The 30-day stay of execution granted to death row prisoner Shafqat Hussain is set to expire on Friday.

However, an executive inquiry to verify his age is expected to make its findings public this week and sources privy to the investigation tell Dawn that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) team probing the case is in possession of new evidence that may put the matter to rest once and for all.

Read: Shafqat's execution stayed for 30 days, jail authorities tell ATC

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry told Dawn on Thursday that the inquiry into Shafqat Hussain’s age was “in its final stages” and its report would be made public soon. Another official linked to the inquiry told Dawn in an off-the-record conversation that the report had been sent to the concerned authority, which would make it public when it deemed fit.

However, he refrained from commenting on the substance of the report.

Also read: Shafqat Hussain case: Nisar says victim's parents under pressure

Following extensive media coverage of the case, Shafqat’s cause was taken up by several civil society organisations and he is currently being represented by lawyers from legal aid NGO Justice Project Pakistan.

Interior ministry confirms inquiry into Shafqat’s juvenility ‘in final stages’

Valerie Khan, a human rights activist and a member of the Child Rights Movement (CRM), told Dawn on Thursday that civil society members had learned from authorities in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) that the birth certificate – obtained by Shafqat’s family in December last year from the AJK local government department and laid before the executive inquiry and the media by his legal team – had been cancelled.

Ms Khan, who specialises in child protection matters and has examined Shafqat’s case extensively, said that this was because the team probing the case had obtained Shafqat’s school record during the course of the inquiry. The school in question is the Government Primary School, Kel Kala Lot, located in the Athmuqam area of AJK, which Shafqat attended as a child.

Also read: Shafqat Husain case

In the school record, a copy of which was provided to Dawn by a civil society organisation working on the case, Shafqat Hussain’s date of birth is recorded as Aug 20, 1986. While this contradicts the earlier birth certificate, which had put Shafqat’s age at the time of his arrest at around 14, it still means that he was under 18 years of age at the time of sentencing.

Shafqat was arrested and sentenced to death in 2004 for the kidnapping and involuntary murder of a seven-year-old boy, who lived in a Karachi apartment building where he worked as a security guard. All courts in the land had turned down his appeals and the Supreme Court threw out a review petition that was the first to raise the matter of Shafqat’s juvenility at the time of arrest, maintaining that this line of defence should have been introduced at the trial court level.

His current legal team, however, insists that Shafqat’s earlier defence attorneys did not plead his case competently, which was why this aspect was overlooked in the past. Just over a month ago, before Shafqat was scheduled to be executed, he was granted a last-minute reprieve and Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had ordered an inquiry into the matter, which was tasked with establishing the veracity of the lawyers’ contention that Shafqat was a minor at the time of sentencing.

The case also garnered a lot of attention on social and mainstream media and became a bone of contention between supporters and opponents of the death penalty.

Tariq Naqash adds from Muzaffarabad: A police official in the town of Kel confirmed that two FIA teams had visited the area in March to check the record of a seminary and a school where Shafqat had studied before leaving for Karachi.

“The teams took records from the madressah, the primary school as well as the local government office that had issued Shafqat’s birth certificate in Dec last year,” local police official Tufail Malik said.

“They promised they would return the record, but it has not been sent back yet,” he added.

Published in Dawn, April 17th, 2015

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