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DEATH PENALTY-UPDATE: Briton in Pakistan Gets Month Lease on Life

Zofeen T. Ebrahim

KARACHI, Aug 24 2006 (IPS) - Pakistan authorities have granted a one-month stay of execution for an Englishman who has been the focus of a massive effort by British authorities and civil society to obtain his freedom.

As reported earlier, Mirza Tahir Hussain, 36, a British Muslim from Leeds, has been on death row in Pakistan for the past 18 years, charged with murdering a taxi driver. Tahir, as he is known, says he acted in self defence after the driver tried to physically and sexually assault him in December 1988. Though he was found innocent of charges in criminal court, Tahir was sentenced to death by a religious ruling of the Federal Shariat Court.

Tahir’s execution has been postponed three times now – June, August and September – as diplomats and civil society organisation try to negotiate a compromise with the family of the taxi driver. Under Shari a law, a prisoner can only be freed if compensation money has been paid to the victim’s family. Tahir is now scheduled to be executed Oct. 1. Pakistani officials refused IPS requests for interviews and would not comment on the reasons for the execution delay.

British government officials together with Chaudhury Shujaat Hussain, the Pakistan Muslim League president, “are pursuing a compromise with the family of the deceased. I understand that this process is inching forward slowly,” wrote Britain’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, Mark Lyall Grant, in a letter dated July 20, 2006, to the Pakistani President’s Secretariat urging a stay of execution. Other groups, like Amnesty International are working to free Tahir.. British members of the European Parliament, too, are working to drum up support for Tahir.

Last week Tahir’s brother, Amjad Hussain, 38, said he was updated by the Foreign Office in London about the progress in negotiations between the UK government and the authorities in Pakistan. “The meeting was very positive,” Amjad said in a telephone interview from Leeds, England with IPS.

“I’m quite hopeful from all the work that is being done here with four parliamentarians working on my brother’s case and cabinet members aware of the latest situation. The Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken it upon himself to personally take this up. The ball is clearly in Pakistan’s court,” he added. “It’s in the interest of both the families to have a closure to this.”

While Tahir Hussain languishes in a death cell in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail, his brother carries on the campaign for his release with more vigour than ever. “While the European Union had always been active using diplomatic channels, the UK government is taking this up very seriously.”

Josep Borrell Fontelles, president of the European Parliament, wrote a letter to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last May urging Pakistan to grant Tahir clemency. Aug. 6, Fontelles followed up with a missive thanking Musharraf.

“May I express hope that this (stay) can be followed by overturning the verdict of the Islamic court and aligning it with the sentence of the regular high court,” Fontelles wrote. “This would greatly improve the image of Pakistan in the world as a country which upholds human rights and the rule of law.”

Still, a spokesman for the family of the taxi driver said they will not negotiate any more and want to see Tahir hang.

“We may be very poor, but to us our honour is more important. Even if all of Pakistan’s fortune is put before us, will we never relent,” Imran Khan, the deceased cousin told IPS.