Father Wants Son, Executed in Pakistan, to Be Buried in Russia

MOSCOW, December 21 (Sputnik) — Russian national Akhlas Akhlaq, executed in Pakistan on Sunday for attempting to assassinate the country’s former president, should be buried in his hometown in Russia, his father said in an interview with Sputnik.

“He should be buried in his own country… his dead body must be brought to Russia," Akhmad Akhlaq said, adding that it would be humane to let his mother and brother see his face once again.

Earlier in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement confirming that Akhlaq was hanged along with three accomplices.

Earlier on Sunday Akhlaq's mother told Sputnik that Akhlas had not had a chance to familiarize with charging papers against him.

She said that her son was libelled, adding that the Pakistanis abducted him and kept him in custody on completely concocted charges.

Akhlaq was born in the Russian city of Volgograd in 1981 to a Russian mother and a Pakistani father. He was raised and educated in Russia, but decided to move to Pakistan. In 2003 he was taken into custody as one of the suspects in a plot to assassinate Pakistan’s former leader Pervez Musharraf. Akhlaq did not plea guilty.

In 2005, he was sentenced to death. Nevertheless, the execution did not take place, as the authorities imposed a moratorium for death penalty in the country.

On December 17, the moratorium on death penalty for terrorism-related cases was lifted by the Pakistani authorities in a wake of the Peshawar massacre, in which Taliban gunmen had attacked a school killing 132 children.