Pakistan defies rights protests to hang 'teen' convict

Pakistan executed a convicted child killer Tuesday, brushing aside a storm of protests from rights groups that his confession had been extracted by torture and he was a minor at the time of the crime.

Shafqat Hussain was hanged shortly before dawn at a jail in Karachi for killing a seven-year-old boy in the city in 2004, his brother and a prison official told AFP.

The case prompted grave international concern, drawing protests from the United Nations, as his lawyers and family said he was only 15 at the time of the killing and was tortured into making a false confession.

In Muzaffarabad, the main town of the Pakistani administered part of Kashmir, his family was distraught.

"Why did they hang my innocent brother, only because we were poor?" said his sister Sumaira Bibi, beating her chest and weeping.

His mother Makhni Begum, looked glassy-eyed, stunned by the news of the execution after seeing her son reprieved from the gallows four times since January.

"My son was innocent, only Allah will prove his innocence in his court," she told AFP.

"We can't do anything but they (executioners) will face Allah on the day of judgement."

- Pleas rejected -

United Nations rights experts have said Hussain's trial "fell short of international standards" and urged Pakistan not to hang him without investigating claims he confessed under torture, as well as his age.

Adding to the concerns, after receiving his body, Hussain's brothers claimed the hanging had not been carried out properly.

"There is a cut mark on his neck and half of his neck is separated from his body," brother Abdul Majeed told AFP.

The Kashmir government urged President Mamnoon Hussain late on Monday to postpone the execution to allow further inquiries, but the hanging went ahead as planned.

"Shafqat Hussain was hanged 10 to 12 minutes before dawn prayers today," a prison official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He was originally due to face the gallows in January but won four stays of execution as his lawyers fought to prove he was under 18 at the time of the offence and could therefore not be executed under Pakistani law.

A government-ordered probe to determine Hussain's age, carried out by the Federal Investigation Agency, ruled he was an adult at the time of his conviction -- though the results have not been published officially.

The British anti-death penalty campaign group Reprieve said Hussain's hanging represented "all that is wrong with Pakistan's race to the gallows".

Pakistan has hanged around 180 convicts since restarting executions in December after Taliban militants massacred more than 150 people at a school, most of them children.

A moratorium on the death penalty had been in force since 2008 and its end angered rights activists and alarmed some foreign countries.

The European Union, which opposes capital punishment in all cases, last week aired serious concerns about the "alarming pace" of executions.

The EU mission in Islamabad warned that a prized trade status granted to Pakistan could be threatened unless it stuck to international conventions on fair trials, child rights and preventing torture.

- Child kidnapped, slain -

Hussain, the youngest of seven children from a remote village in Kashmir, was working as a watchman in Karachi in 2004 when a seven-year-old boy named Umair went missing from the neighbourhood.

A few days later Umair's family received calls from Hussain's mobile demanding a ransom of half a million rupees ($8,500 at the time), according to legal papers.

Hussain was arrested and admitted kidnapping and killing him, but later withdrew his confession, saying he had made it under duress.

His true age has proved difficult to ascertain -- exact birth records are not always kept in Pakistan, particularly for people from poor families like Hussain's.

A birth certificate circulated in the media several months ago, but it appeared to have been issued only in December and Interior Minister Chaudhry Ali Nisar Khan said there was no proof of its authenticity.

Amnesty International estimates that Pakistan has more than 8,000 prisoners on death row, most of whom have exhausted the appeals process.

Supporters of the death penalty in Pakistan argue that it is the only effective way to deal with the scourge of militancy.

But critics say Pakistan's legal system is largely unjust, with rampant police torture, poor representation for victims, and unfair trials.