Lahore (HRNW) Muhammad Iqbal, a former death row convict, was set free on Wednesday after being in jail for 22 years, according to the Justice Pakistan Project.
Iqbal was arrested in 1998 for a shooting in Mandi Bahauddin when he just was just 17 years old, and was sentenced to death.
The court had handed him a death sentence despite him being a minor. The Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO), 2000 which prohibits the execution of a juvenile had not been passed at that time.
Initially at the Mandi Bahauddin jail, Iqbal was transferred to the Gujranwala district jail in 2015 where his death warrant was issued. His case was then taken up by the JPP, a human rights organisation that provides legal representation to vulnerable prisoners, two days before his execution.
“I was very young when I used to accompany my mother to the Gujranwala district jail to meet him,” his nephew Tassawur Iqbal told JPP.
“On our way back from jail my mother used to weep. The tears she tried to hold in front of her brother would come streaming down uncontrollably.”
Tassawur said that he always wondered whether he would get to meet his uncle.
Be the first to comment on "Man freed from jail after 22 years on death row"