ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The death row prisoner Saulat Mirza has alleged that he killed former Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) Director Shahid Hamid on the directives of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Chief Altaf Hussain.
The former MQM activist Saulat Mirza was scheduled to be hanged to death in Balochistan’s Machh jail at 5:30 am on Thursday; however, now his execution has been postponed for 72 hours.
In a video statement from death cell aired on Geo News, Saulat Mirza alleged that he received the order to kill the then KESC director Shahid Hamid from Altaf Hussain at the MQM leader Babar Ghauri’s residence through telephone.
Saulat Mirza further alleged that people whom the party wanted to save from police torture are provided protection in police stations.
Saulat Mirza was sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court in May 1999 for killing the managing director of then KESC Shahid Hamid, his driver Ashraf Brohi and guard Khan Akbar in July 1997.
Currently detained in Machh jail in Balochistan since April 2014, Saulat Mirza was arrested in 1999 during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government.
Mirza will be the first prisoner executed at Machh jail since the announcement of the anti-terror national action plan in the aftermath of the deadly militant attack on a Peshawar army public school on December 16 last year.
Nearly 50 executions have been carried out across the country since December 17 last year when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted a six-year moratorium on death penalty for those convicted for terrorism.
