No work,Pakistan hangman looks for new job

Says as long as zardari is in power people will not be hanged,there are 7,000 prisoners on death row in country

A Pakistani hangman,who has executed over 200 people,says he is looking for a new job as there have been no executions in more than two years and President Asif Ali Zardari will not allow any hangings.

I am looking for a new job,since as long as President Zardari is in power,he will not allow any hangings, said Sabir Masih,whose earliest memories are of accompanying his father to the gallows. Masih,a 27-year-old Christian,who is the hangman at Lahores Kot Lakhpat Jail,said men from his family had been hangmen since the era of British rule in the subcontinent. My grandfathers brother was Tara Masih,the famous executioner of (Zulfiqar Ali) Bhutto, he told The Express Tribune newspaper. With no executions in over two years,Masih said he feels useless going to work now.

According to reports,around 7,000 prisoners are on death row in Pakistan though Zardari stayed all hangings in in November 2008. Earlier,Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani approved a cabinet decision to commute all death sentences to life imprisonment. This could not materialise after then Supreme Court Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar took suo moto notice of the issue. To avoid confrontation,the Law Ministry tried to bring an amendment through parliament but there has been little development because of pressure from political and public circles in favour of the death penalty.

Masih,who has been a hangman for five years,said he was nervous the first time he carried out an execution. I was a little nervous to put the noose around the first time and to pull the latch. But the jail superintendent supported me, he said. He said he believed people on death row deserve capital punishment if they have killed someone.

Masih is paid Rs 10,000 a month and Rs 20 a hanging.

He said the most peculiar hanging in his career was of two brothers in Sahiwal,who came singing to the gallows. When the magistrate asked them to ask for forgiveness from the victims family,the brothers started to hum a song and laughingly responded saying they were rightly accused so they deserved to be hanged. Some people cry. Most people just pray, he said.

Sabir hanged over 200 people in the first three years of his career. I did my first century quickly because during (former presidents) Pervez Musharrafs era there were many executions. Once I hanged five people in a day at the jail in Faisalabad, he says. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said,the country has one of the highest rates of capital punishment in the world,with 27 offences that are punishable by death.