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.

Amnesty is slamming Islamabad for “shamefully sealing its place among the world’s worst executioners”

“It is bewildering that Pakistan has revived it s appalling plans to hang a man who is unable to stand,” said Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at Reprieve, an international human rights organisation.

“Nothing has changed since Basit’s execution was halted earlier this year, on the grounds that his disability could mean that he might suffer from a prolonged, needlessly cruel execution.”

Basit’s mother said she sent a mercy petition to the president weeks ago but received no reply.

“I am again waiting for a miracle to happen,” she said.

Pakistan’s president has the constitutional authority to pardon any convict.