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DEATH PENALTY: Mirza Tahir Hussain Freed by Pakistan’s Musharraf

Zofeen T. Ebrahim

KARACHI, Nov 20 2006 (IPS) - For most observers it was a mere stroke of the pen, but that mark made by Pakistan’s president saved 36-year-old Briton Mirza Tahir Hussain from going to the gallows.

There are “so many things I want to accomplish now that I’m free,” Tahir, as he is known, told IPS in a telephone interview.

A native of Leeds, England, Tahir spent half his life in prison with a death sentence over his head for a taxi driver’s murder, which Tahir says was committed in self-defence. Though he was found innocent in criminal court, he was sentenced to die by the religious Federal Shariat Court in 1988. Tahir, then 18, was visiting Pakistan for the first time when a taxi driver attempted to assault him. The two struggled over a gun, and the taxi driver was killed.

Last Wednesday President Pervez Musharraf commuted Tahir’s sentence to life imprisonment. Because the Briton of Pakistani descent had already spent 18 years with good conduct, he was allowed to go free.

Tahir’s execution had been postponed four times, as the government of Pakistan faced international pressure not to kill an innocent man. The last reprieve was announced just a week before Prince Charles’ visit on Oct 29. Charles, the Prince of Wales, as well as Prime Minister Tony Blair, several British members of parliament, European members of parliament and numerous human rights groups have been pressing for Tahir’s release.

Among them was Amjad Hussain, who worked tirelessly for the past 18 years to free his younger brother. He was told of Tahir’s pardon by Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the U.K., Maleeha Lodhi. “It seemed surreal and I’m afraid I was bereft of any emotions,” said Amjad, in a telephone interview with IPS from Britain.

Now, less than a week later, Tahir has been flown from Pakistan to Britain, and is safely with his family at an undisclosed site. “Tahir and I have just offered our morning prayers,” Amjad said with enthusiasm.

“I felt an immense surge of gratitude that the Almighty Allah showed mercy and spared my brother,” said Amjad, his voice breaking down every now and then in that one-hour informal chat. “I also realised at that moment that all my misgivings regarding Pakistani society and President Pervez Musharraf were misplaced. He is truly an enlightened human being.”

The two brothers also publicly thanked Blair, Prince Charles and all the others who worked to free Tahir.

“I have plans too, and there are many things I want to do all at the same time, God willing,” Tahir told IPS.

He plans to continue a formal education, one that ended abruptly with the struggle over a gun. After that, Tahir said he wants to devote the rest of his life to improving conditions for prison inmates.

“That too, and so many other things I want to accomplish now that I’m free,” he said.

Neither Tahir nor his brother had slept in the last 48 hours. Tahir’s sudden release from Adiala prison, in Rawalpindi, was not without drama either. He was freed and taken straight to Faisalabad, a town 250 kilometres away. Soon, he was driven back to Rawalpindi where he boarded a plane that flew him the to Britain, accompanied by Helen Feather, a representative from the British High Commission’s office in Islamabad, whom Amjad refers to as “a lifeline to Tahir,” for her work in maintaining contact with him.

Things happened so quickly that Tahir never got a chance to seek forgiveness from the slain taxi driver’s family. In an earlier interview, Tahir had told this reporter that would be the first thing he would do if he ever was released from prison. “Logistically, as well as from the security point of view, this was impossible,” Amjad said.

Back home in the small village in Chakwal, the family of Jamshed Khan, the taxi driver, is livid. “We can’t believe this has happened. Such injustice!” says Imran Khan, 23, the deceased’s cousin.

“If a verdict has been given by the court then why did the president change it? Here, without the nod of the British or the American governments, not a single soul has the power to make decisions, not even President Musharraf. (He has made) a complete mockery of the justice system,” said Jamshed’s uncle, Sohbat Khan, adding those 18 years of fight to exact revenge – through the death penalty – were in vain.

When Tahir’s plane reached Heathrow airport on Friday night, Amjad went into the aircraft to receive his brother and was surprised by the sight. Instead of the prison inmate who sported a white flowing, untrimmed beard, long salt-and-pepper hair and wearing white shalwar kameeze, Tahir was attired in a Western-style shirt and trousers, his hair and beard fashionably trimmed.

“Since his arrival, the treatment meted out to him, and by default to me as well, is that of a VIP. Perhaps the only thing missing was the red carpet on the tarmac! He’s become an instant celeb,” Amjad said, letting out a guffaw, his happiness unmistakable.

“When I visited Tahir in May this year in the jail, I just broke down and cried uncontrollably. It was so heart-rending to see him behind bars. I hugged and kissed him and he tried to pacify me. His composure and the inner strength plus his ordeal propelled me to carry on this campaign.

“It mystified me to see him so much at peace with himself. At that time I vowed to myself that I would hold my brother once again, without the cold steel bars between us. God granted me my wish yesterday,” Amjad said, adding, “I kept my emotions under control in front of full public gaze, last evening, and so did Tahir.”

The family has received many flowers and cards. Strangers congratulate them. “This is not even our home but there is so much humanity here, we’ve received so much support and love – all those values that once formed an integral part of our culture and religion and which we seem to be drifting away from,” Amjad said.

Amjad, who had given up his job two years ago to devote his life to the campaign to free his brother, is in no hurry to going back to being a scientist. “My task to support, protect Tahir remains unfinished. Now the real work begins. He will need serious rehabilitation and counselling for him to be eased back into society.”

In addition to the premature aging, Tahir may well suffer from a sense of alienation, post-traumatic stress syndrome or paranoid tendencies after having spent 18 years secluded behind bars, said Pakistani psychologist Asha Bedar.

Tahir has not experienced life or seen what the outside world looks like for half his life. He has learnt just by reading books of scholars and the Quran. By choice, he neither reads contemporary literature nor watches TV, “for the filth it churns out,” he told IPS in an earlier interview.

I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said he believed the constant public pressure helped free Tahir. “There should be no doubt that international pressure compelled General Musharraf to think hard about his case,” he told IPS..

Though rare, this is not the first time a Pakistani president has pardoned a death row prisoner. In 1988, the government led by Benazir Bhutto remitted the death sentence handed down to a number of people, Rehman said.

Still, he added that Tahir’s case “effectively demolishes the arguments in favour of the death penalty” because an innocent man could have been put to death.

“A special feature of the case is the exposure of the extent to which society has been brutalised. The reaction of the victim’s family after commutation of Mirza Tahir Hussain’s sentence should not make anyone complacent about the mental state of Pakistan’s society,” Rehman said.