A court in Lahore has issued a three-day stay of execution for a death row inmate who family members and lawyers claim suffers from a mental illness, according to a legal rights group.
Authorities planned to execute Khizar Hayat early on Tuesday morning, despite efforts by his lawyers to order a medical board examination to investigate claims that Hayat suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.
A spokesman for Justice Project Pakistan — a law firm that advocates for the rights of death row inmates — confirmed to ucanews.com on Monday night that the court had issued the temporary stay of execution.
The stay follows a petition filed by the condemned man’s son, Bilala Hayat, and a petition for mercy submitted to the president of Pakistan, the son said.
The court further required prison officials to respond to claims that Hayat’s mental state precludes him from execution.
Though temporary, the stay is likely to be extended because of a moratorium on executions for the holy month of Ramadan, which begins on Thursday.
A background brief submitted to the courts by the Justice Project Pakistan earlier this month said that Hayat was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2008, and that prison officials have since overseen the administration of anti-psychotic drugs.
Hayat, a former police officer, was convicted in 2003 of killing a fellow officer and has spent the last 12 years on death row.
The government lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty in December last year following a deadly Taliban attack on a military-run school in Peshawar in which 132 children were killed.
Authorities have executed 150 people in the six months since the moratorium was lifted — the most in any similar period in the last decade.
Last week, authorities executed Aftab Bahadur Masih, a Christian man who lawyers say was a juvenile when the murder he was convicted of was committed.
