Filippo Monteforte—AFP
Muhammad Siddique was convicted by an anti-terrorism court after he killed three people in 2004.
Pakistan on Thursday hanged a man convicted of murdering three people, taking to 25 the number of executions carried out since the country resumed the death sentence in December.
Muhammad Siddique, a security guard convicted by an anti-terrorism court of murdering three people in a theater following a quarrel, was hanged in Toba Tek Singh district in Punjab province.
Following a Taliban school massacre in December that left more than 150 people dead, Pakistan lifted a six-year moratorium on executions in terror cases. The government extended the order on Tuesday, directing provincial governments to proceed with hangings for all death row prisoners who had exhausted their appeals and clemency petitions.
“Siddique, a 60-year-old private security guard was hanged at 05:30 a.m. for killing three people in a theater in 2004,” said Wasif Bashir, a senior administration official in the city. A jail official also confirmed the hanging.
Reintroducing the death penalty was part of Pakistan’s stepping up of the fight against militants and criminals since the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in December.
Heavily armed gunmen went from room to room at the Army-run school gunning down 153 people, most of them children, in an attack that horrified the world.
The United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on Pakistan to re-impose its moratorium on the death penalty.