According to the Observer, the Foreign Office is supporting specialist civilian courts aimed at tackling terrorism.
Around £10 million has been spent since 2016. In that time 59 death sentences have been handed down.
While the aim is to tackle terrorism, Pakistan’s legal system defines terrorism as any crime designed to create a “sense of fear or insecurity in society”.
Critics claim people who have no connection to extremism are being caught by the system.
Harriet McCulloch, the deputy director of human rights charity Reprieve, told the Observer: “It is deeply troubling that Britain is assisting in the investigation and prosecution of crimes that carry the death penalty in Pakistan, particularly as those crimes are being tried in courts that do not uphold basic standards of due process and where the rates of wrongful conviction are alarmingly high.”
Christian mother Asia Bibi was sentenced to death in 2010 (before British money was introduced) after being accused of blasphemy. She was acquitted at the Pakistani Supreme Court earlier this year after spending 8 years on death row.
The Foreign Office says it’s confident all funding for programmes has been delivered in a way consistent to its opposition of the death penalty.
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