To forget the pain of deaths past, we must do some killing of our own.

Executions are set to guide the plot of Pakistan’s latest episode of the War on Terror. Every day brings news of the numbers, 8,000 awaiting death, a few hung already, the ominous pictures of nooses plastered on the pages of newspapers.

So much hope and consensus exists around the idea of executions; their necessity, their justification, their absolute ability to curb the scourges coursing through Pakistan that one dare not argue.

There is no room to say that the problem with death by state sanction is not that the crime is not horrendous, the massacre not punishable, but that the possibility of a mistake, of killing the wrong man for the wrong crime is a taint no state can risk.

Then, there is the case of killing children themselves.

Shafqat Hussain belonged to this very category. Said to be 14 years old at the time of his conviction by an anti-terrorism court in 2004, the only evidence against Shafqat was his own confession, produced after nine days of detention in police custody.