Pakistan defies rights protests to hang 'teen' convict

Pakistan on August 4 executed a man convicted of killing a child, brushing aside a storm of protests from rights groups that his confession had been extracted by torture and he was a minor at the time of the crime.

Shafqat Hussain was hanged shortly before dawn at a jail in Karachi for killing a seven-year-old boy in the city in 2004, his brother and a prison official told AFP.
 
The case raised grave international concern, drawing protests from the United Nations, as his lawyers and family said he was only 15 at the time of the killing and was tortured into making a false confession.
 
In Muzaffarabad, the main town of the Pakistani administered part of Kashmir, his family was distraught.
 
"Why did they hang my innocent brother, only because we were poor?" said his sister Sumaira Bibi, beating her chest and weeping.
 
His mother Makhni Begum, looked glassy-eyed, stunned by the news of the execution after seeing her son reprieved from the gallows four times since January.
 
"My son was innocent, only Allah will prove his innocence in his court," she told AFP.
 
"We can't do anything but they (executioners) will face Allah on the day of judgement."          

United Nations rights experts said Hussain's trial "fell short of international standards" and urged Pakistan not to hang him without investigating the torture claims, as well as his age.
 
Hussain's brother Gul Zaman said that in their last meeting, just a few hours before he faced the scaffold, he continued to protest his innocence.
 
Zaman told AFP his brother's last words to him were: "I never even touched the boy -- I want to let the world know this as I lay down my life."  

After receiving the body,...