'Barbaric' Death Sentence In Pakistan

A Pakistani man was sentenced to death Thursday for murdering 100 children in the country's worst serial killing, and the court ordered him to be strangled in front of his victims' parents and his body dismembered.

Judge Allah Baksh Ranja ordered 42-year-old Javed Iqbal to be publicly executed in a Lahore park, saying his body "will then be cut into a 100 pieces and put in acid the same way you killed the children." Court officials hadn't decided who would strangle Iqbal.

CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports most Pakistanis believe the judgement is fitting.

One Pakistani man says, "Now the public is reassured, and knows the true value of human life. An eye for an eye... one life for a hundred lives."

Public punishments are not common in Pakistan, where death sentences are usually hangings carried out inside jails.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said the government will challenge the sentence.

"This kind of punishment is not permitted," he told reporters. "We are signatories to the human rights convention which does not permit this."

A leading human rights lawyer called the sentence "barbaric."

"This is judicial anger and emotionalism. This is unheard of. It is barbaric and arouses the fascistic instincts in a society," said Asma Jehangir, who also is a high-ranking human rights investigator for the United Nations.

Ranja also sentenced Iqbal to 700 years in prison for destroying evidence -- seven years for each of the 100 bodies that Iqbal is said to have destroyed by dissolving them in acid.

"Your honor, I am innocent," Iqbal declared after hearing the judge convict and sentence him.

As he was being led out of court, Iqbal told reporters that he didn't kill anyone. His lawyer planned to appeal the verdict. The appeal process could last years.

Iqbal initially confessed to the killings in a letter to police last year. He said he strangled the children, dismembered their bodies and placed them in a vat of acid. He later recanted his confession.

In his letter, Iqbal directed officials to his home, where they found a blue vat in which the remains of two bodies were found. Police found pictures of 100 children whom Iqbal in his letter confessed to having killed. They also found clothes belonging to the young victims.

Parents of missing children were contacted to sort through clothes and pictures to try to identify their missing children. Most were identified, but police did not recover any more bodies.

On Dec. 30, Iqbal walked into the Lahore office of a leading newspaper and turned himself in. He refused to go directly to the police, saying he feared for his life.

Three accomplices, including a 13-year-old boy, also were found guilty. The boy and one accomplice were given prison terms, while the third accomplice was sentenced to death.

Iqbal and the accomplices livd together in the house where the remains were found. Two of the accomplices were arrested at a bank when they tried to cash a check made out to Iqbal.

In his letter to police, Iqbal said he killed the children in retaliation for police abuse. He said he had been wrongly picked up and badly beaten while in police custody.