Pakistan set to execute Sunni activist

Sipah-e-Sahaba activists protest against the planned execution

By South Asia analyst Alastair Lawson

An activist from the hardline Sunni Muslim group, Sipah-e-Sahaba, is due to be executed on Wednesday in Pakistan for carrying out a sectarian murder.

The condemned man, Sheikh Haq Nawaz, is one of the first Sipah-e-Sahaba members to face the gallows.

Several hundred Sipah-e-Sahaba supporters throughout Pakistan have been taken into custody in advance of the execution in what the authorities say is an effort to prevent wide scale protests over the execution.

Security throughout Pakistan has been tightened ahead of the scheduled hanging of Mr Nawaz inside the confines of the jail where he has been held in Punjab.

Security has been tightened

He was sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court 10 years ago after being found guilty of shooting Sadiq Ganji, who was the Director of the Iranian Cultural Centre in Lahore.

Mr Ganji was the first prominent Shi'a Muslim from Iran to be killed in violence between Shi'as and Sunnis which began around two decades ago and has so far resulted in around 1,000 deaths.

Since then, several Iranians Shi'as have been murdered in sectarian attacks that have been blamed on the hardline Sunni Sepa-e-Sahaba organisation.

The violence has at times severely strained Islamabad's relations with Tehran.

Sectarian violence

If Mr Nawaz's execution goes ahead - and the authorities say that he has exhausted all avenues of appeal - its likely to infuriate Sipah-e-Sahaba and other radical Sunni Muslim organisations in Pakistan.

The Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty

The military government has refused to commute his sentence, stressing that it is determined to prevent what it says are extremist groups from wielding too much influence in Pakistan.

The government says that its in a better position to clamp down on sectarian violence than its civilian predecessors, who it argues were often held to ransom by hardline groups.

Lawyers representing the condemned man have not ruled out the possibility of an eleventh-hour reprieve, which they say could be obtained by paying compensation to the family of the murdered man in Iran.

Meanwhile, the sectarian violence which has dogged Pakistan for much of the last 10 years has continued unabated: in just over a week, seven people, six of them Shi'as, have been killed.