Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Indian spy convict 'faces death'


Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has reportedly signed the death warrant for an Indian man who was convicted of spying and carrying out bomb blasts.
A Lahore jail official said Sarabjit Singh would be executed on 1 April.

He says he is a poor farmer and victim of mistaken identity who strayed drunk from his border village into Pakistan.

The human rights minister of Pakistan, Ansar Burney, told the BBC he was not aware of any death warrant being signed by the president.

Mr Musharraf rejected Mr Singh's mercy petition earlier this month, a day after another Indian man, Kashmir Singh, was released following 35 years on death row in Pakistan for alleged spying.

Sarabjit Singh was convicted in 1991 of spying and carrying out four bombings which killed 14 people the year before in the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Faisalabad.

Political pressure

Pakistani officials say he was arrested while trying to slip back into India.

Two years ago, Pakistan's Supreme Court rejected Mr Singh's attempt to have his death sentence overturned.

The case has received wide publicity in India and the government has come under intense political pressure to intervene.

In 2005, former Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh asked for Mr Singh to be pardoned on humanitarian grounds.

India and Pakistan have jailed hundreds of each other's soldiers and civilians over years of hostility.

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