Blood money offered for Pakistan activist

Pakistan's Supreme Court has already upheld the death penalty

By South Asia analyst Alastair Lawson

The mother of a hardline Sunni activist scheduled to be executed in Pakistan has offered to pay compensation to the family of his victim so that his life can be spared.

The condemned man, Sheikh Haq Nawaz, has exhausted all legal avenues of appeal for the murder 10 years ago of an Iranian diplomat.

He is due to be executed on Wednesday.

The offer of compensation in return for his life, a practice often referred to as blood money, has been made in a letter to the Iranian ambassador in Pakistan.

Clemency rejected

Sheikh Nawaz, an activist of the predominatly Sunni Sepa-e-Sahaba organisation, was originally convicted and sentenced by a special court in 1991.

Sepa-e-Sahaba blames Iran for backing rival Shi'a groups

His victim, Sadiq Ganji, was the director of the Iranian Cultural Centre in Lahore and was the first high-ranking Shi'a Muslim to be killed in Pakistan.

His death appeared to be part of the on-going sectarian conflict in Pakistan between hardline Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.

Last chance

If the victim's family accepts the offer of blood money, Mr Nawaz can escape the death penalty.

But because the condemned man's lawyers do not know the address of the victim's family in Iran, they have written a letter to the Iranian Ambassador in Islamabad, asking him to accept the money on the family's behalf.

It remains unclear whether his failure so far to have the death sentence commuted is a result of pressure on Pakistan's military administration from the Iranian Government.

But the murder of Mr Ganji, followed several years later by the killings of more Iranans in Multan and Rawalpindi, put a strain on traditionally friendly relations between the two countries.

The petition to the Iranian ambassador from the convict's mother was faxed on Monday.

It coincided with the killing of a local Shi'a leader by unknown gunmen in Punjab's southern district of Khanewal, some 250km from Lahore.

In just over a week, seven people - six of them Shi'a - have been killed in what some Shi'a organisations have described as sectarian attacks.

If Mr Nawaz is executed on Wednesday morning, he will be the first Sunni hardliner to be hanged in Pakistan on court orders.