MORE than 100 prisoners apprehended in British-funded drug arrests in Pakistan are now facing execution, legal action charity Reprieve said yesterday.

The warning followed a judge’s decision this week to schedule a hanging that would end the country’s two-year moratorium on the death penalty.

Pakistani prisoner Shoaib Sarwar was granted a one-month stay of execution which expires on Monday October 27.

Reprieve argued that if the execution goes ahead it would question the lives of at least 112 other drug offenders currently on death row including a number of British nationals who, Reprieve argues, were convicted in trials which did not meet international standards.

Britain’s Strategy for the Abolition of the Death Penalty lists Pakistan as a “priority country.”

However the British government has given more than £12 million to support anti-drug operations in Pakistan, where drug possession can carry a death sentence.

This funding has covered training for officers in Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force as well as intelligence and equipment.

Reprieve accused ministers of failing to take steps to stop the aid leading to executions.

Reprieve director Maya Foa said: “Despite calling Pakistan a ‘priority country’ in its strategy to abolish the death penalty worldwide, Britain has sent millions of pounds to help Pakistani forces arrest and sentence people to death for alleged drug offences.

“The people whose death sentences British aid has supported are hardly the barons or kingpins of the international drug trade, they are innocent scapegoats or vulnerable mules, often targeted by notoriously corrupt police forces eager to meet ‘quotas.’

“British aid for executions breaches the government’s own human rights rules and makes a mockery of its commitment to fight capital punishment abroad.”