Pakistan Executes Terrorism Convicts During a Visit by Kerry

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/world/asia/7-executions-in-pakistan-coincide-with-kerry-visit.html

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan executed seven prisoners on Tuesday, including one who had been convicted of taking part in an attack on an American Consulate, as part of a broader crackdown on militancy after last month’s school massacre in Peshawar.

The hangings, which took place in four prisons under conditions of increased security, coincided with the second day of a visit to Pakistan by Secretary of State John Kerry, who had come for talks on counterterrorism cooperation, economic aid and other issues.

Speaking to reporters in Islamabad, Mr. Kerry said that just as the United States stood by France in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, so it would support Pakistan against Islamist militants, including the Pakistani Taliban, who carried out the Dec. 16 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, killing 150 people, most of them children.

Pakistan lifted a six-year moratorium on executions after that attack. Tuesday’s hangings, which were announced by the office of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, brought to 16 the total number of executions since the assault on the school.

Human rights groups say the hangings smack of revenge and have failed to address the root causes of Islamist militancy. The Pakistani military and Mr. Sharif’s government say that capital punishment acts as an effective deterrent.

Some of those executed in the latest wave had been convicted of taking part in a plot to kill the former military ruler Pervez Musharraf. One of those hanged on Tuesday had been convicted of taking part in a 2003 assault on the United States Consulate in the southern port city of Karachi.

Three others were hanged for their involvement in the 2001 killing of a Defense Ministry official.

“There is no room for terrorism or terrorists in our society, and government is determined not to be at ease till the elimination of the last terrorist from our country,” Mr. Sharif said earlier on Tuesday while reviewing progress on the National Action Plan, a 20-point strategy devised to deal with terrorism after the Peshawar massacre.

Public alarm and anger at the ruthlessness of the Taliban attack in Peshawar led lawmakers to hand new powers to the military. Last week, Parliament passed a constitutional amendment that empowers military courts to try suspected militants. On Tuesday, the government said the jurisdiction of those courts would be extended to Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, districts that are administered under special rules, which may allow the courts to operate with a greater degree of secrecy.

Officials say that since the Peshawar school attack, the police have started 164 investigations into hate speech in Punjab Province and Islamabad, and have made 157 arrests and closed 40 printing presses.

The United States also ratcheted up pressure on the Pakistani Taliban. On Tuesday, the State Department announced that it had classified the group’s nominal leader, Maulana Fazlullah, as a “specially designated global terrorist,” forbidding American transactions with him and freezing any assets of his that the United States can find. Some Pakistani officials had claimed that Afghan officials were using Mr. Fazlullah as a proxy against Pakistan.

In his remarks in Islamabad, delivered alongside Sartaj Aziz, Mr. Sharif’s adviser on national security and foreign affairs, Mr. Kerry urged Pakistani officials to also target the Haqqani network, which has carried out many attacks in Afghanistan, and other militant groups with longstanding ties to the Pakistani military.

“Clearly, there are sanctuaries,” he said, but added that the United States was “very pleased” at recent Pakistani efforts to diminish those havens.

Mr. Aziz said on Tuesday that Pakistan’s military operation in North Waziristan had been so successful that the infrastructure of the Haqqani network had been “totally destroyed,” and that its ability to use Pakistan as a base for attacks in Afghanistan had “virtually disappeared.”

But the American assessment of the damage done to the Haqqani network was more qualified.

“They’ve been disrupted in the course of the North Waziristan operations,” a senior State Department official told reporters Monday night. “And so it has had at least some impact on their planning abilities. But we have to see whether that’s a permanent disruption or whether they just regroup someplace else where they can get back up to full speed.”

Mr. Kerry said he had encouraged Pakistani officials to continue to strengthen their country’s previously fraught relationship with the Afghan government, now led by President Ashraf Ghani, and pledged American support for that effort.

A planned trip by Mr. Kerry on Tuesday to the Peshawar school where the massacre took place was canceled because of bad weather, said another senior State Department official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, per department protocol.