Pakistani mother seeks pardon for paralyzed son on death row

ISLAMABAD – The mother of a paraplegic inmate on death row in Pakistan has urged the country's president to pardon her son.

Nusrat Perveen said Monday that President Mamnoon Hussain had ordered authorities to halt the execution of her son Abdul Basit in January, hours before he was to be hanged.

After meeting Basit at a prison in the city of Faisalabad, Perveen told The Associated Press that her son had lost a lot of weight and looked skeletal.

Basit has been paralyzed from the waist down since contracting meningitis in prison in 2010 and uses a wheelchair. He has been on death row since 2009, convicted of murdering a man in a financial dispute.