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Sharif assembling new Pakistan government

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May 132013
 

Although still to be officially confirmed as Pakistan’s election winner, Nawaz Sharif has already received messages of congratulations from the US and India and picked a finance minister to serve in his prospective cabinet.

In Karachi, the stock market swelled to hit a record high on hopes Sharif can revive the economy as he held talks on forming a new government.

“All of the results aren’t in yet; we’re still waiting on a numer of constituencies [to count votes] and certain provinces,” said Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Lahore.

“Whatever the case, Sharif has been meeting with senior figures from within the PML-N party and we understand talks are being held with independent candidates.”

PML-N spokesman Siddiqul Farooq said that Sharif’s party had secured a “comfortable majority” at the national level and a “two-thirds majority” in Punjab province, where Sharif’s younger brother Shahbaz would return as chief minister.

It was reported on Monday that Ishaq Dar, who served as finance minister in Sharif’s second administration and again briefly in 2008, would return to the job.

Dar had “all the facts and figures at his fingertips” and will present the budget in June for the next financial year starting on July 1, Farooq said.

‘Equal partners’

The election commission is expected to finalise the results on Monday night.

Sharif will then have up to three weeks to prepare his government before the president summons the national assembly and new MPs are sworn in.

He will then be confirmed as leader of the house and as prime minister, allowing him formally to appoint his cabinet.

US President Barack Obama said Washington was ready to work with Islamabad “as equal partners” and welcomed the transition.

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he hoped to chart “a new course” in relations.

Singh and Sharif have had “long discussions” since the election, Sharif said at a press conference on Monday. “Mutual fear needs to be addressed,” he said.

On the US relationship, Sharif said: “I think we have good relations with the United States of America. We need to listen to each other.”

In Karachi, the benchmark index of top 100 shares rose 1.6 percent to 20,232 points in early trade, surpassing the 20,000 mark for the first time as the election results defied analysts’ predictions of a weak parliament.

Economic revival hopes

Investors are hopeful of an economic revival under Sharif, whose privatisation policies earned him a good reputation among traders and industrialists during his two previous tenures in the 1990s.

“We have credibility on the economic front, the unprecedented surge in the stock market today is proof,” the PML-N spokesman said.

Cricket star Imran Khan, who promised a “tsunami” propelling him into power, appeared to have slipped into third place on 29 seats – still an achievement for a party which previously won only one seat in 2002.

Sharif will likely need only the estimated 27 independents and his proportion of seats reserved for women and minorities, to secure a majority in the first democratic transition in a country accustomed to long periods of military rule.

Imran Khan electrified the campaign with his calls for a new Pakistan, galvanising youths and the urban middle class in particular with promises to end corruption, introduce tax reform and stand up to the US.

His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf looks likely to form a provincial government in the Taliban-hit northwest, but Khan says he will go into opposition at the national level.

“God willing, we will demonstrate the best opposition in the assembly. The strongest power of a democracy is a strong opposition, which was not there in Pakistan unfortunately for the past 10 years,” he said on Sunday.

In a televised statement from the hospital bed where he is laid up with a fractured spine following a fall at a rally, he also alleged vote-rigging.

Commenting on a possible coalition, Sharif said on Monday that he is “not against” parties working together, “but as far as Islamabad is concerned we are ourselves in a position to form our own government … all those who share our vision we will be happy to work with them.”

Nawaz Sharif poised to return as Pakistan PM

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May 132013
 

Nawaz Sharif poised to return as Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif, winner of the Pakistani elections, is holding talks to form a new government, with fixing the economy and tackling the armed insurgency likely to be his two biggest challenges.

Partial, unofficial results from Saturday’s elections represented a comeback for Sharif, 63, who was deposed as prime minister in a 1999 military coup and spent years in jail and exile.

Sartaj Aziz, a senior PML-N official and former cabinet minister, said Sharif was in talks on Sunday with some independent MPs to get them on board and in discussions to work out “a few key portfolios” in the cabinet.

TV projections suggested no single party would win an absolute majority in the 342-seat National Assembly.

But Sharif’s centre-right Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) was well ahead with more than 115 of the chamber’s 272 directly elected seats, according to various projections by private channels and as many as 128 according to Geo TV.

PML-N appears to have done well enough to rule out the prospect of a weak coalition, as the party of former cricket star Imran Khan achieved its own breakthrough on an anti-corruption platform that resonated with younger voters.

Imran Khan’s breakthrough

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was neck and neck with the outgoing Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on around 30 to 25 seats, a remarkable achievement given that it only won one seat previously, in 2002.

Besides the National Assembly, voters also elected four provincial assemblies and Khan’s party emerged on top in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where he has pledged to end US drone attacks.

The Bhutto clan’s PPP, which led the outgoing coalition, was heavily defeated over its record of ineffectual administration over the past five years.

Pakistani Taliban attacks marred the election campaign, with violence killing more than 150 people, including 24 on polling day itself.

In the latest incident, six people were killed and more than 40 wounded in Quetta, in Balochistan, when a suicide bomber targeted a police building late on Sunday.

Earlier, Pakistan’s largest domestic observer mission, The Free and Fair Election Network, said that the polls were “relatively fair” despite some irregularities and violence at the polling stations.

Flanked by his brother and daughter, Sharif gave a victory speech late on Saturday to hundreds of jubilant supporters at PML-N headquarters in Lahore.

“We should thank Allah that he has given PML-N another chance to serve you and Pakistan,” he said, after nearly 60 percent of the 86 million electorate.

“I appeal for all parties to come to the table and sit with me and solve the country’s problems.”

It remains unclear whether Sharif will preside over any substantive policy change in the war on anti-government fighters.

While he has voiced support for peace talks with the Taliban, he has been less vocal against US drone strikes than his main rival Khan, and is considered a pragmatist with whom the US can work.

Neighbours’ reactions

Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, congratulated Sharif on Sunday on his “emphatic victory” and wrote on his official Twitter page that he hoped to chart “a new course for the relationship” between the neighbours.

Hamid Karzai, Afghan president, called on Sharif’s incoming government to help negotiate an end to the Taliban insurgency that has ravaged his country since 2001. Pakistan suffers from its own home-grown Taliban insurgency.

Pakistan, which has had three coups and four military rulers, is marking the first time that one elected civilian administration will hand power to another after a full term in office.

The election was defined by the collapsing economy, an energy crisis that causes power cuts of up to 20 hours a day, the unpopular alliance in the US-led “war on terror” and chronic corruption.

Sharif has pledged a pro-business agenda to revive the feeble economy for what will be his third term as prime minister, a record in Pakistan, following two tenures in the 1990s.

Osama Bin Javaid, reporting from Islamabad, said Sharif’s first challenge is to form a national government.

“This will allow him to go ahead with agenda that he has promised to his electorate,” he said.

Sharif has also indicated that he is ready and willing to work with the US.

“He is well positioned and has the depth and patience to deal not only with countries that border Pakistan” but also with the wider world, our correspondent said.

Pakistanis vote in landmark elections

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May 112013
 

Pakistanis vote in landmark elections Millions of Pakistanis are expected to brave Taliban threats to vote in elections pitting a former cricket star against a two-time prime minister and an incumbent blamed for power blackouts and inflation.

Saturday’s vote marks the first time in the country’s 65-year history that a civilian government has completed its full term and handed over power in democratic elections. Previous governments have been toppled by military coups or sacked by presidents allied with the powerful army.

Polls opened at 8am (03:00 GMT) and were due to close at 5pm, allowing an electorate of more than 86 million to vote for the 342-member national assembly and four provincial assemblies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan.

The Taliban have branded democracy un-Islamic and have waged a campaign of attacks against the main secular parties, killing more than 130 people in what has been called the country’s deadliest election in history.

Deadly violence struck again on Friday, with a pair of bombings against election offices in northwest Pakistan that killed three people and a shooting that killed a candidate in the southern city of Karachi.
Kamal Hyder, reporting from the city of Peshawar, said the borders with Afghanistan closed.

“The city of Peshawar itself, which has over 900 polling stations and over 8,000 security personnel deployed, is preparing to hold one of the most expensive elections in the history of the country.

“The question will be: will the people come out to vote in large numbers?”

He said several bombs had reportedly been defused before polls opened on Saturday.

The umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) stepped up their threats on the eve of the elections, warning voters to boycott polling stations to save their lives.

Around half of the estimated 70,000 polling stations have been declared at risk of attack, many of them in insurgency-torn parts of Baluchistan and the northwest.

The frontrunner is ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif, head of the centre-right Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) but much of the attention has been focused on cricket star Imran Khan with promises of reform and an end to corruption.

The 60-year-old leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) tapped into a last-minute surge of support after fracturing his spine when he fell from a stage at a campaign rally on Tuesday.

If Khan’s party can take enough votes away from Sharif, it might open the way for the outgoing centre-left Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to once again form the government.

Despite widespread unhappiness with the party’s performance over the past five years, it does have a loyal following in rural areas of southern Sindh province and southern Punjab.

The main issues are the troubled economy, an appalling energy crisis which causes power cuts of up to 20 hours a day, the alliance in the US-led war on armed groups, chronic corruption and the dire need for development.

Pakistan prisoner attacked in India jail dies

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May 102013
 

A Pakistani prisoner jailed in India has died after he was attacked by another inmate in an apparent revenge attack for the death of an Indian prisoner in a Pakistani jail.

Sanaullah Haq, also known as Sanaullah Ranjay, who was admitted to a hospital in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh with serious head injuries, had suffered renal failure late on Wednesday, the doctor said on Thursday.

“His condition was extremely critical. He died early morning,” a senior doctor at the government hospital said on condition of anonymity.

“Although it’s scant consolation I’d like to offer a sincere apology to the family of Sanaullah Haq and my sympathies for their loss,” Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir state where Haq had been imprisoned since 1999, wrote on Twitter
on Thursday.

Last week, Pakistan said the assault was “condemnable” and called on India to punish the attacker. India said it regretted the incident and gave consular access to Ranjay.

The hospital would hand over the body to two of his relatives who had arrived in India from the Pakistani city of Sialkot ”as per the instructions of the government”, the doctor said.

Ranjay, who has been serving a jail term for a 1990s bomb blast that killed 10 people, was attacked by a prisoner identified as a former Indian army soldier just 24 hours after Sarabjit Singh’s death in a Lahore jail that drew strong reaction from India.

Last weekend, demonstrators took to the streets in Pakistan-administered Kashmir to protest against the attack on Ranjay.

The prison violence could fuel tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, whose relations were hit by a border flare-up earlier this year.

The neighbours have fought two of their three wars over the disputed region of Kashmir, which they each control in part but claim in full.

New Delhi says 535 Indian prisoners, including 483 fishermen, are in Pakistani jails, while 272 Pakistani prisoners are behind bars in India.

Campaigning ends for Pakistan election

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May 102013
 

Campaigning has ended for Pakistan’s general elections, with Nawaz Sharif, former prime minister, and Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned politician, addressing rallies on the last day.

Saturday’s vote is being seen a democratic milestone in a country ruled for half its history by the military, but campaigning has been marred by violent attacks by the Taliban that left more than 100 people dead since April.

Sharif thanked supporters on Thursday in the country’s second largest city, Lahore, while Khan appealed via a video address to appeal people to come out and vote at a rally in the capital, Islamabad.

Sharif is seen as the favourite to become the next prime minister.

On Thursday son of Yousuf Raza Gilani, the former prime minister, was abducted by gunmen while campaigning in Multan in Punjab province.

Ali Haider Gilani, is running as an independent candidate for the provincial assembly, but is a member of the Pakistan People’s Party which completed its five years in government.

The attack left his personal secretary dead and others injured.

Chaudhry Maqbool Jatt, a police officer, told AFP news agency the abduction was under investigation “from different angles, including the possibility of election rivalry”.

Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Lahore, said: “At this stage, there is not very much information on the abduction.”

Tyab said the Gilani family told him “there was very little information on who abducted Ali Gilani”.

Many suspect the role of Pakistan Taliban, though there has not been any claim by the group, which has pledged to sabotage the election.

Other attacks on Thursday killed six other people, including two that targeted a candidate for Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N party and the conservative Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, officials said.

Renwed bombings ahead of Pakistan vote

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May 092013
 

An explosion during a political rally has killed two people and left at least others injured in northwest Pakistan.

Wednesday’s blast occurred during an election rally held by the Awami National Party (ANP) in Bajaur Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

No group has claimed responsibility for the explosion, which came on the same day as a suicide bombing in the Bannu district.

That attack killed at least three and wounded 27 people.

A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives outside a police station in the city of Bannu, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing a policeman and two women, police said.

“As you see, all this destruction, all the windows and doors of the houses in a one kilometre radius have been damaged by this explosion,” said Dilber Khan, a local resident who lost his house in the explosion.

“Some houses have had their roof collapse too.”

Another bomb hidden in a vegetable cart exploded in a market in another northwest city, Hangu, wounding 14 people, police said.

In Balochistan, the nation’s largest province, three separate attacks left 19 people injured.

General election

Overnight attacks in Sindh province killed at least two political activists and wounded six others in an attack on the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) party offices in Hyderabad.

In the east, Fareed Awan, an independent candidate in Punjab province, survived an attack by unidentified armed motorcyclists in Gujranwala.

Wednesday’s attacks are the latest in a series that have targeted the country’s upcoming general election.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, (TTP), had specifically threatened several secular parties back in March.

The Pakistani Taliban have also condemned democracy as a whole, meaning any political party taking part in the election could be targeted.

Next week’s polls mark a historic transfer of power from one democratically elected government fulfilling its full term to another, something that has never happened in Pakistan’s coup-checkered history.

Police ban rallies in Dhaka after violence

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May 082013
 

Police have banned all rallies in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, a day after clashes between the police and protesters left at least 27 people dead.

The country’s main opposition parties have called a two-day nationwide shutdown from Wednesday to protest against what they describe as the “mass killing” of protesters in a crackdown by security forces.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its Islamist allies called the strike after claiming that hundreds of people were killed on Sunday and early Monday, when police broke up a mass rally in central Dhaka.

“We have called two days of nationwide strike to protest the mass killing of Hifajat-e-Islam workers and supporters on Sunday and Monday,” BNP spokesman Khandaker Mosharraf told the AFP news agency on Tuesday.

The strike is set to begin at 6am local time (01:00 GMT) on Wednesday and end at 6pm on Thursday, Mosharraf added.

On Monday, supporters of the Hifazat-e-Islam organisation who are demanding an anti-blasphemy law, blocked roads with burning tires in clashes that lasted for more than five hours and left more than 100 people injured.

Police said they used sound grenades, water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse at least 70,000 protesters who were camped at the commercial district of Motijheel in the capital.

“We were forced to act after they unlawfully continued their gathering at Motijheel. They attacked us with bricks, stones, rods and bamboo sticks,” Dhaka police spokesman Masudur Rahman AFP.

Violence also flared up at Hathazari, a town just outside the southern city of Chittagong, as well as in the southern coastal district of Bagerhat.

Dozens of demonstrators were arrested, while the leader of the protests, 93-year-old Allama Shah Ahmad Shafi, was put on a plane bound for Chittagong and the deputy chief was detained in the capital.

Police said that Shafi had not been arrested.

According to Al Jazeera correspondent, whom we are not naming due to reporting restrictions, said Hefazat-e-Islam has called for nationwide shutdown on May 12.

The turmoil comes as the government struggles to deal with outrage over the collapse of a factory building northwest of Dhaka, where the death toll has crossed 700 since the late April accident.

TV stations off air

Two local television stations – Diganta Television and Islamic TV – which broadcast footage of the raid on Motijheel were forced off the air, journalists at the channels said.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, called for an end to the violence, expressing his sadness at the loss of life, a spokesman said.

Ban “urges political and religious leaders to engage in constructive dialogue and help defuse the tensions,” Martin Nesirky, the UN spokesman, said.

The demonstrators demanded mandatory religious education and the end to what they described as an “anti-Islam” policy that calls for gender equality.

Hifazat, a newly created religious group, is demanding the death penalty for all those it says are defaming Islam.

It said it held the mass protest to push a 13-point list of demands which also included a ban on men and women mixing freely together and the restoration of pledges to Allah in the constitution.

Sheikh Hasina Wajed, Bangladesh prime minister, has said the existing laws already have sufficient safeguards to address the protesters’ concerns.

She said that the government “will not allow any chaos in the name of Islam, a religion of peace”.

The South Asian nation, officially secular with a 90 percent Muslim population, has seen a surge in violence since January, when a court began handing down war crimes verdicts related to the 1971 independence war.

Three leading Islamists have so far been convicted for their role in mass killings during the liberation war, which saw the birth of the new nation of Bangladesh from Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Imran Khan ‘stable’ after fall

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May 082013
 

Imran Khan, the chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf political party, has been injured after falling from a makeshift stage during a campaign rally in Lahore.

The cricketer turned politician fell 14 feet as he was stepping off an improvised forklift that was raising him to the top of the platform. Local TV station Geo TV aired footage of the accident and showed Khan bleeding and unconscious with a gash on his head.

Asad Hashim, reporting from Lahore’s Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital where Khan is being treated, said he is conscious, having suffered two fractures to his spinal column but not to his spinal cord.

He said Khan has had no life-threatening injuries.

The hospital, which was set up by Khan himself, told Al Jazeera earlier that they were carrying out further tests and intended to keep Khan overnight.

Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said the politician hit a metal rod as he fell from the forklift; there was no first aid available and no ambulance was on site at the time of the incident.

The incident in Lahore occurred on a day marked by multiple blasts targeting election rallies. In the Upper Dir district of northwest Pakistan, two people were killed and three injured after a grenade attack.

Earlier on Tuesday, an attack on a political rally of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Lower Dir’s Baba Gam village killed at least six people and injured dozens more.

An improved explosive device caused the blast, near a vehicle carrying Zahir Shah, the brother of Muhammad Zamin Khan, the PPP candidate from the PK-96 constituency. Zahir Shah was killed in the attack.

Hangu bombing

In another incident on Tuesday, a bomb exploded at a political party rally a district in northwest Pakistan of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) party, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens more, including a provincial candidate.

The JUI rally in a bazaar in Hangu was being led by Mufti Seyd Janan, who is reported to be not in a serious condition.

Reports indicated that children returning home from school were among the wounded.

It is thought that a bomb was planted on a motorbike and exploded by remote control near Janan’s vehicle.

JUI has historically been sympathetic to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and has previously acted as a mediator between political parties and the anti-government group.

The TTP, however, claimed responsibility for an attack on the JUI on Monday which killed 25 people and wounded 60 more.

It is thought the target of that attack was a candidate, Munir Orakzai, who survived the blast.

Pakistan’s elections are due to be held on May 11, with all campaigning to cease by May 9.

Hyder said the violence surrounding the elections was a source of great concern.

“The TTP has said it will sabotage these elections, which it believes are against Islam,” he said. “Previously it has been targeting secular parties, but now it appears to be targeting religious parties as well.”

Afghan-Pakistani border tension flares again

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May 062013
 

Cross-border clashes between Afghan and Pakistani security forces have broken out for the second time in three days, escalating tensions between the two countries, officials have said.

Afghan officials said Monday’s crossfire started after Pakistani troops tried to repair a gate on the border in the Afghan district of Goshta, where last week an Afghan border policeman was killed, and two Pakisanis were injured, in an exchange of fire.

“This morning’s clash began after the Pakistani side continued to repair the gate, which was damaged in the previous fighting,” said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province.

Afghanistan says the gate at Pakistan’s Gursal military post encroaches on its territory. The Nangarhar governor has spoken several times to Pakistani consular officials to tell them not to repair the gate, Abdulzai said.

Pakistani officials blamed Afghans for starting the clashes.

“Afghan troops opened unprovoked fire from across the border at our post … They fired mortars and automatic weapons,” one Pakistan official told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity. “Our troops responded with retaliatory fire.”

Shortly after the skirmish, Pakistan’s Foreign Office released a statement saying the “Pakistani post in Gursal had come under attack from Afghan forces and there had been several threatening and provocative statements made by Afghan leadership in this regard.

“The posts on Pakistan-Afghanistan border are serving the useful and mutually beneficial purpose of better border management, which is crucial for interdicting cross border undesirable activity.”

There have not been reports of any casualties so far.

Fractious neighbours

Ties between the fractious neighbours have strained despite renewed efforts last month from John Kerry, the US secretary of state,  to get them to work more closely on peace efforts in Afghanistan.

Thousdands of Afghans protested in streets of Kabul on Friday shouting “Death to Pakistan”, and burning the Pakistani flags.

The porous border is unmarked in places and a key battleground in the fight against Taliban violence plaguing both countries.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered his top officials to take immediate action to remove the gate and other “Pakistani military installations near the Durand Line”.

The Durand Line is the 1893 British-mandated border between the two countries. It is recognised by Pakistan, but not by Afghanistan.

Afghanistan maintains that activity by either side along the line must be approved by both countries.

Both countries are US allies but Kabul accuses Islamabad of playing a double game in supporting Taliban attacks on US and Afghan troops.

Pakistan denies the allegations and is locked in its own battle against Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistan, which backed the Taliban’s control of Afghanistan from 1996-2001, is seen by the West as having a central role in negotiating a political settlement with Taliban fighters who shelter in Pakistan’s border districts.

Sarabjit Singh: Convicted Indian ‘spy’ cremated

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May 032013
 

Sarabjit Singh, the Indian convicted of spying in Pakistan and killed in a Pakistani jail, has been cremated amid mass outrage across India.

Senior Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi and several government ministers from the state of Punjab were among the large crowd attending the state funeral in Singh’s home village.

Singh, sentenced to death by Pakistan in 1991, died after being attacked with bricks by inmates in Lahore’s jail.

Delhi called the attack “barbaric”.

Indian PM Manmohan Singh has demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice.

Sarabjit Singh had been convicted of spying and over his role in bomb attacks that killed 14 people in Pakistan in 1990.

His family always insisted he was innocent and had strayed into Pakistan by mistake when he was arrested.

The issue risks stirring fresh tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours and long-time rivals, correspondents say.

Meanwhile a Pakistani prisoner, Sanaullah Haq, suffered critical head injuries after he was attacked by a fellow inmate at the high-security Kot Bhalwal jail in Jammu, in Indian-administered Kashmir.

He has been admitted to intensive care at a Jammu hospital and doctors say he is in a coma.

Police say Haq has been in prison for the past 17 years on militancy-related charges.

His attacker, police say, is a former Indian army soldier convicted of murder. Reports said the attack happened on Friday morning after the two men argued.

‘Brave son of India’

The body of 49-year-old Sarabjit Singh was flown to Amritsar, northern India, from Lahore on Thursday.

Hundreds of mourners waited at the airport, describing Sarabjit Singh as a “martyr”.

His death triggered protests in India, as people burned Pakistani flags and accused Islamabad of a conspiracy to kill him.

His body was handed over to his family in the village of Bikhiwind for Friday’s cremation.

In a statement, Manmohan Singh called Sarabjit Singh “a brave son of India” and said the attack was “barbaric”.

“It is particularly regrettable that the government of Pakistan did not heed the pleas of the government of India, Sarabjit’s family and of civil society in India and Pakistan to take a humanitarian view of this case,” he added.

He was referring to mercy petitions which had been rejected by Pakistani courts and former President Pervez Musharraf.

Sarabjit Singh’s sister Dalbir Kaur called her brother’s death “a murder by Pakistan”.

Ms Kaur said she would continue to fight for the release of other Indian prisoners in Pakistani jails.

Espionage accusations

Sarabjit Singh fell into a coma after last Friday’s attack in Lahore’s Jinnah hospital and died on Thursday morning.

He was assaulted as he and other prisoners were brought out of their cells for a one-hour break.

Two inmates have been charged over the attack and two officials suspended.

The Pakistani foreign ministry said Sarabjit Singh had received “the best treatment available” and that “medical staff at Jinnah Hospital had been working round the clock… to save his life”.

Tensions between the two countries had already increased in the past six months with the execution in India of Kashmiri Afzul Guru over the 2001 attack on India’s parliament, and of Mohammed Ajmal Qasab, a Pakistani who was the sole surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Sarabjit Singh’s lawyer Owais Sheikh said his client had received threats after Guru’s execution.

Pakistan and India frequently arrest each other’s citizens, often accusing them of being spies after they have strayed across the land or maritime border.

In recent years, several Indians returning from Pakistani jails have admitted to spying.

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