PAKISTAN: EXECUTION SCHEDULED DESPITE GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCEMENT

even though Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced that all death sentences were to be commuted to life imprisonment on June 21, four prisoners have been executed and the fifth, Zulifkar Ali, is to be hanged on October 8 in Rawalpindi's Adiala Jail. Ali's two small daughters decided to make a final desperate bid to meet President Asif Zardari in his well-guarded presidency to save the life of their father, on the plea that they had already lost their mother and should not be deprived of their father. Noor Fatima, 11, and Fiza, 9, were asked by jail authorities to come and meet their father for the last time on October 7 as jail authorities have issued hanging orders of Zulifkar Ali. Ali was working in the Pakistani navy when he was arrested after a shootout in which a taxi driver was killed.