[DAWN] EVEN for the convicted and condemned, it was a pathetic picture: Saulat Mirza, formerly of the MQM, confessing just hours before he was scheduled to be executed. Mirza said he’d been used like tissue paper, and that others learn from his example. It seemed a far cry from the ’90s Saulat: the man who had jeered "it’s just a formality" when the trial judge sentenced him to death.Now slumped over in Machh Jail, Mirza only wished that party workers "open [their] eyes". Call it a hit man’s humanity: having murdered KESC MD Shahid Hamid and so many others, Saulat Mirza was making one last bid for peace. Two months later, he was hanged
The whole thing wasn’t just wildly unreal -- the last supper of a contract killer, beamed right into our living rooms. It was also without point: a confession without a magistrate has no legal value. Nor was it a revelation: Saulat was rehashing what he’d already told a joint investigation team years ago.