Pakistan's top court commutes death sentences of mentally ill inmates

Lahore - Court orders Kanizan Bibi and Imdad Ali be transferred to a mental health facility.

By AFP

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Published: Wed 10 Feb 2021, 2:39 PM

Two mentally disabled prisoners on death row had their sentences commuted on Wednesday by Pakistan’s Supreme Court in what activists called a landmark judgement on mental illness.

The top court ordered Kanizan Bibi and Imdad Ali be transferred to a mental health facility and called for the case of a third inmate facing execution to be reviewed.


It also called for the establishment of a medical board to vet inmates for mental illness in capital cases.

“The Supreme Court of Pakistan has made a landmark judgement in the case of three mentally ill death row prisoners,” said Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a legal non-profit representing the three inmates.


“We hope the guidelines detailed in the judgement will permeate to all levels of the judiciary and prison staff so that mental illnesses can be detected and treated instead of being ignored and denied,” JPP spokesperson Ali Haider Habib added.

Human rights organisations have long called on Pakistan to reinstate a moratorium on the death penalty, which was lifted after the Army Public School massacre in Peshawar in 2014 that killed 151 people, most of them students.

Since then the country has hanged more than 500 prisoners, many of whom were linked to militancy.

The list of crimes punishable by death in Pakistan is long — taking in dozens of offences including blasphemy, adultery, drug trafficking, and even “sabotage of the railroad”.

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