[3] The moratorium was lifted fully after the massacre of 132 students and 9 members of staff of the Army Public School and Degree College in Peshawar, and routine executions resumed.
[7] As part 6 of the Constitution gives the Court the right to find an individual guilty of any crimes punishable by death under the Penal Code (Act XLV of 1860)[permanent dead link], or any other relevant law.
Thus, does He command you, so that you may learn wisdom"[10][11][12] This scripture of the Qur'an, while it grants the right to life, also permits individuals' lives be taken only "by way of justice and law."
[13][14] The Pakistan Penal Code contains 27 different offences punishable by death, including blasphemy, rape,[15] sexual intercourse outside of marriage, assault on the modesty of women, and smuggling of drugs.
The second type under section 302 is ta'zir, this is death or imprisonment, this word is an Islamic legal term referring to an offence punishable at the discretion of a judge or state.
The Code address the penalty and offences relating to religion under section 295B and C. Subsection B punishes any defamation made against the Holy Qur'an with life imprisonment.
Although Article 6 of the ICCPR does not expressly prohibit capital punishment, the Human Rights Committee said its drafting ‘strongly suggests the abolition is desirable’.
Despite the lack of such a mandatory requirement, the movement towards abolishing the death penalty worldwide has been increasing rapidly in the last sixty years, particularly since the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
[19] The United Nations Economic and Social Council published the Safeguards Guaranteeing the Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, attempted to define the meaning of ‘most serious crime’ in 1984.
The Pakistan Peoples Party government, whose former chairperson Benazir Bhutto was a well known opponent of the death penalty, came to power in March 2008, and installed its President, Asif Ali Zardari on 9 September 2008.
[21][22] On 16 December 2014, after the Peshawar school attack, in which the Pakistani Taliban murdered 132 children and at least nine others, the authorities announced the moratorium would be lifted for terrorism cases.
Amnesty found that not only that is a violation of the right to life, but on many occasions, capital punishment is usually imposed after an unfair trial by both the military and the civil courts.