"Yes, two militants Aqil alias Doctor Usman and Arshad Mehmood have been hanged in Faisalabad jail," Shuja Khanzada, Home Minister of Punjab, where the executions took place, told AFP. A senior official from the prison department also confirmed the executions.
Aqil, who goes by the name Doctor Usman, was convicted for an attack on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009 and was arrested after being injured. Arshad Mehmood was convicted for his involvement in a 2003 assassination attempt on former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf. Officials said that there may be ten more executions in the coming days: six in Punjab and four in Sindh.
"Six more convicted militants will be hanged in the coming days," Khanzada said, referring to executions that come under his jurisdiction of Punjab province. Shahid Hussain, superintendent of a prison in Sukkur, Sindh, told AFP that death warrants had been issued for two convicted members of the banned sectarian militant outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). "The black (death) warrants of two LeJ activists Attaullah Qasim and Muhammad Azam have been issued by court for December 23," Hussain told AFP.
An anti-terrorism court has also been asked for the execution orders for two other convicts, Behram Khan and Shafqat Hussain, Qazi Naseer Ahmed, superintendent of the central jail in Karachi told AFP. The United Nations has called for Pakistan to reconsider executing terror convicts, saying that "the death penalty has no measurable deterrent effect on levels of insurgent and terrorist violence" and "may even be counter-productive".
"We urge the Government not to succumb to wide-spread calls for revenge," said UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Rupert Colville, referring to this week's Taliban school assault - the country's worst ever terrorist attack. Pakistan imposed a de facto moratorium on civilian executions in 2008, though hanging remains on the statute book and judges continue to pass the death sentence. Only one person has been executed since then, a soldier convicted by a court martial and hanged in November 2012.
Rights campaign group Amnesty International estimates that Pakistan has more than 8,000 prisoners on death row, most of whom have exhausted the appeals process. The government says that more than 500 of the death row prisoners were convicted on terror-related charges.
R staff reporter from Faisalabad: Meanwhile, two suspects have been arrested by police around Faisalabad's central jail. According to the Police sources, both suspects were shifted to an undisclosed location for interrogation.