Paraplegic due to be executed today in Pakistan

Pakistan’s only paraplegic death-row inmate is set to be executed today at a high-security prison in the industrial city of Faisalabad, his mother and an international rights group said.

Abdul Basit, 43, has been paralysed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair since contracting meningitis in prison in 2010.

According to his lawyer and family, he has been on death row since 2009 after being convicted of killing a man over a financial dispute in Punjab province.