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| India-Pakistan |
| Last suppers |
| 2015-03-26 |
| [DAWN] DEATH row confessions, like beads of sweat, reek of fear. It is natural for any human being, faced with the prospect of execution, to unburden his or her soul before catching up with it lighter in the hereafter. Dr Samuel Johnson once said: "When a man knows that he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." The MQM activist Saulat Mirza has been on death row since his conviction in 1999 for the murder of Shahid Hamid, the managing director of KESC -- as K-Electric was then known ---- in 1997. Saulat has had not a fortnight but 15 years to concentrate his mind wonderfully. With less than a few hours left to live, though, he decided to divulge confidences that would otherwise have been interred with him. His revelations are incendiary. They involve alleged complicity of the MQM chief Altaf Hussain ...think of the head of the Barzini clan, only in Urdu... and the sitting governor of Sindh Ishratul Ibad in that murder. Saulat Mirza intended that his self-serving distribution of culpability would have the same terminal effect on the MQM leadership that director general Federal Security Force Masood Mahmood's did when he turned approver and claimed that he had received orders to murder Ahmed Raza Kasuri from prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ...9th PM of Pakistain from 1973 to 1977, and 4th President of Pakistain from 1971 to 1973. He was the founder of the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP). His eldest daughter, Benazir Bhutto, would also serve as hereditary PM. In a coup led by General Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto was removed from office and was executed in 1979 for authorizing the murder of a political opponent... . Bhutto died on the gallows for the death of Kasuri's father; Masood Mahmood died in the anonymity of a US witness protection programme. The president granted Saulat a reprieve just hours before the time of his execution, presumably to encourage him to reveal more. The government then decided otherwise. It asked for a second black warrant, which has been granted. Saulat now faces the gallows again. Like all condemned prisoners, he will be offered a last supper. Who knows what that meal will comprise? |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Other parting last words from Death Row Words. 1. “Let's do it!” (The Inspiration for Nike's Famous Slogan)—Gary Gilmore, 1976 2. James French has been credited with these famous last words before his death by electric chair: "How's this for a headline? “French Fries”, 1966 3. "Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel.” (Spoken by G. Appel Before Being Executed by Electric Chair), 1928. 4.“Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you're screwing around!” (Spoken by Carl Panzram, 1930. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2015-03-26 06:53 |