| schema:articleBody
| - Two mentally disabled prisoners on death row had their sentences commuted by Pakistan's Supreme Court Wednesday in what activists called a landmark judgement on mental illness. The court ordered Kanizan Bibi and Imdad Ali to be transferred to a mental health facility, and asked 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 court also appeared to take a stronger line against the execution of inmates deemed mentally disabled in the future. "We hold that if a condemned prisoner, due to mental illness, is found to be unable to comprehend the rationale and reason behind his/her punishment, then carrying out the death sentence will not meet the ends of justice," said Pakistan's Supreme Court in its ruling. The decision was hailed by legal activists who have been lobbying the courts for years to address the issue. "We hope the guidelines... 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," said Ali Haider Habib, spokesman for the Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a legal nonprofit organisation representing the three inmates. Bibi was 16 and a housemaid when she was sentenced to death in 1991 after being found guilty of murdering a wealthy woman and her five children. Her family long claimed that she was brutally tortured and forced to confess, and she has not spoken in years due to severe mental health issues. Ali, meanwhile, was sentenced to death for the murder of a religious cleric in 2002, but diagnosed with schizophrenia while in prison in 2012. Human rights organisations have long called on Pakistan to reinstate a moratorium on the death penalty. The ban was lifted after the Army Public School massacre by the Taliban in Peshawar in 2014 that killed 151 people, mostly students. Hangings were initially reinstated only for those convicted of terrorism, but later extended to all capital offences. Since then the country has hanged more than 500 prisoners, many 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". Last year Pakistan's parliament passed a resolution calling for the public hanging of convicted child killers and rapists, drawing another backlash from human rights organisations. zz/ds/fox
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)