wo Pakistani soldiers have been arrested amid nationwide anger after television footage showed them shooting an unarmed man in daylight as he pleaded for his life.
Sarfaraz Shah, 22, bled to death as a group of soldiers stood by ignoring his cries for help.
The television pictures of the incident provoked an outcry throughout the country, while human rights campaigners said the film, which has been seen by millions on television and the internet, was a graphic expose of brutality within the armed forces and the culture of impunity within them.
The footage shows Mr Shah being grabbed and led by the hair, kicked in the backside and pushed towards to a group of armed Pakistan Rangers by a man in plain clothes.
The young man is seen clearly pleading with them as one of the soldiers presses his rifle into his neck. Mr Shah appears to become suddenly alarmed and tries to lower the rifle barrel with his hands. The soldier pulls away from him and then Mr Shah is shot.
He is seen in the film kneeling in a pool of blood, screaming out for help, as he tries in vain to stand up.
Two of the soldiers, Shahid Zafar and Mohammed Afzal, were handed over to police in Karachi after they were named as the ringleaders of a group of five Pakistan Rangers.
They were held in custody after Pakistan’s prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani promised the killers would be brought to justice.
The country’s chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry summoned its top law officer and the commander of the Pakistan Rangers to explain the incident after a court official said Mr Shah had been killed ”in cold blood” in what was “tantamount to extra-judicial killing by the law enforcing agency.”
“It was a brutal act and a brazen violation of most essential fundamental right,” the registrar said in a letter.
Asma Jahangir, chairman of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association and its leading human rights campaigner, said he had been killed in the “most barbaric manner.” “The way that boy was pleading and the Rangers, so many of them, decided to shoot him at point blank. These security people are a state within themselves and had there not been a public outcry it would have found the fate of any other extra-judicial killing,” she said.
She warned the country’s chief justice not to make knee-jerk and populist statements on the case but called for a thorough investigation and “respect for due process.” According to the Human Rights Commission Pakistan, 338 people were killed in extra-judicial ‘encounter shootings’ by the country’s security forces last year.
They were held in custody after Pakistan’s prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani promised the killers would be brought to justice.
The country’s chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry summoned its top law officer and the commander of the Pakistan Rangers to explain the incident after a court official said Mr Shah had been killed ”in cold blood” in what was “tantamount to extra-judicial killing by the law enforcing agency.”
“It was a brutal act and a brazen violation of most essential fundamental right,” the registrar said in a letter.
Asma Jahangir, chairman of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association and its leading human rights campaigner, said he had been killed in the “most barbaric manner.” “The way that boy was pleading and the Rangers, so many of them, decided to shoot him at point blank. These security people are a state within themselves and had there not been a public outcry it would have found the fate of any other extra-judicial killing,” she said.
She warned the country’s chief justice not to make knee-jerk and populist statements on the case but called for a thorough investigation and “respect for due process.” According to the Human Rights Commission Pakistan, 338 people were killed in extra-judicial ‘encounter shootings’ by the country’s security forces last year.