Five soldiers arrested after Pakistan park killing
by Hasan Mansoor – Thu Jun 9, 10:58 am ET
KARACHI (AFP) – Pakistan on Thursday arrested five soldiers for shooting dead a young man at point blank range in a park after the killing was filmed live and broadcast on television, shocking human rights activists.
Five members of the Rangers paramilitary rounded on unarmed 22-year-old Sarfaraz Shah in Karachi's most exclusive neighbourhood of Clifton on Wednesday, claiming he had tried to rob a policeman's family.
Footage of the incident, filmed by an unidentified cameraman, was broadcast repeatedly on local television stations and uploaded to Internet site YouTube.
The clean-shaven man, wearing black trousers and a navy shirt, is seen crying and pleading for his life as a soldier cocked his rifle at his neck.
A soldier is heard saying: "This is the man" to which the man responds: "I am helpless, my friend."
"Please do not fire, please not, please please," he cried.
After being shot in the hand and thigh, as blood seeps onto the ground, the man pleads: "Please take me to the hospital, please take me, please save me, o friend save me."
He tries to stand, but quickly crumples to the ground. A soldier is heard saying: "Ok, that's enough". The man continues to beg for help as soldiers appear to amble around, watching him fall unconscious.
Several hundred people attended Shah's funeral in Karachi, the country's biggest city which has suffered scores of killings linked to political and ethnic tensions in recent months. Mourners chanted "the Rangers are killers."
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the culprits would be "prosecuted" but told lawmakers it was illegal to abuse state institutions, after an MP called the paramilitary "terrorists in uniform".
He warned parliamentarians that under article 63 of the constitution, abusive language could not be used against the superior judiciary and armed forces, according to state news agency APP.
The park where Shah was shot is named after assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, whose family home is in Clifton.
Late Wednesday, relatives took the body to the house of the chief minister of Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, demanding that the soldiers be arrested.
The victim's older brother Salik, who is a TV reporter, said Sarfaraz was a student who had been looking for work to support his poverty-stricken family.
"He was a decent and mannered person with no criminal record whatsoever. Charges from the Rangers that he was a robber are ridiculous and criminal."
"He went to the park to pass the time. He was brutally shot and left to die because of profuse bleeding."
"What we want is justice. Befitting justice."
Leading human rights activists and lawyers condemned the killing as a sign of how brutalised Pakistan has become, after years of bomb attacks, targeted assassinations, kidnappings and a Taliban insurgency in the northwest.
"This act is extremely unlawful, even if the youth was a robber it did not merit to kill him like this," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told TV channels.
Police official Tariq Dharejo told AFP the soldiers were in Rangers' custody but would be handed over to police after an internal inquiry, vowing that they would open legal proceedings over the killing of the 22 year old.
Last month, security forces shot dead five unarmed Chechens, one of them a pregnant woman in southwestern province Baluchistan.
Zohra Yusuf, chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said the country had descended into a "trigger-happy society where shoot-to-kill has become routine practice for the law enforcement agencies".
"We condemn this extrajudicial killing and fear our society is getting brutalised and falling to anarchy, which is needed to be stopped."
Amin Yousuf, secretary general of Pakistan's Federal Union of Journalists, said the cameraman who had filmed the killing was now in danger and that the Rangers should merely have arrested Shah if he was involved in a crime.
"A cameraman of a local TV channel happened to be there to do a story on the park, when he saw the incident and filmed it.
"The cameraman's life is in danger. He has got threats and we are making all efforts to save his life," said Yousuf.
Five soldiers arrested after Pakistan park killing - Yahoo! News
