Briefs | Pakistan – Prison suspends execution of paraplegic inmate

A prison official says Pakistan has have suspended the execution of the only paraplegic inmate on death row. Ahmad Nadeem, the chief of the prison in eastern city of Faisalabad, says he received the order from the Pakistani presidency, hours before yesterday’s scheduled execution. It was the fourth time that Abdul Basit’s life has been spared on humanitarian grounds. Basit, 43, has been on death row since 2009 for a murder conviction. He became paralyzed from the waist down after contracting meningitis in 2010. Nadeem says the government will seek its legal options during the two-month suspension. His mother Nusrat Parveen has asked the government to free her son. Amnesty International says Pakistan has executed 300 inmates since it lifted a moratorium on the death penalty late last year.

Pakistani fighter jet crashes, killing woman co-pilot

Pakistan’s Air Force says a fighter jet has crashed during a routine training exercise and that the aircraft’s female co-pilot died following the crash. A statement from the Air Force says there was a “serious in-flight emergency during the final stages” of the exercise over Punjab province on Tuesday and that both the pilot and co-pilot of the FT-7PG aircraft ejected. Both were seriously injured and the female co-pilot later died of her injuries, becoming the first woman pilot in the Pakistani Air Force to die while in service. The jet crashed near the town of Kundian in Mianwali district.