INDIA. HANGING OF INDIAN MILITANT DEFERRED AFTER MERCY PETITION

October 4, 2006: the wife of Mohammed Afzal, who has been slapped with a death sentence for a terror attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, has filed a mercy petition before President APJ Abdul Kalam, news reports said. Kalam, who received the application yesterday, has forwarded it to the federal Home Ministry for comments, officials at the president's office said.
The filing of the mercy plea, the last resort available to a person facing the death sentence in India, puts an automatic stay on the execution of the death warrant, the Indian Express newspaper reported.
Afzal was given the death sentence by India's apex supreme court after he was convicted in 2005 for providing logistical support to Pakistani militants who stormed the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001.
Last week a New Delhi court signed Afzal's death warrant and directed authorities at New Delhi's Tihar Jail to make arrangements for hanging him on October 20.
All five militants were killed by Indian security personnel in a two-hour encounter. Six police officers and a Parliament employee were also killed in the gunbattle.
Family members of the policemen killed in the Parliament attack have also submitted a memorandum to the president urging him not to show any mercy to Afzal, the Indian Express reported.
"The policemen laid down their lives to foil the attack. It is ironical that even a year after being convicted for their ghastly and inhuman crimes, the terrorists have managed to escape the gallows," the petition said. (Sources: Dpa - German Press Agency, 04/10/2006)