Pakistan police recapture mosque attacker

Police in the Pakistani province of Punjab say they have recaptured an escaped prisoner who had been sentenced to death for a violent sectarian attack.

The prisoner, Shabbir Shah, escaped last week from a prison in Lahore and was caught late on Friday after he boarded a bus in the town of Shorkot.

He was convicted along with five others for the killing of twenty-two people in an attack on a mosque in the early 1990s.

Officials say five prison staff are facing an inquiry. A BBC correspondent in Lahore says his escape caused shock and panic in Punjab, where nearly a thousand people have died in sectarian attacks in the past ten years.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service