Fresh hope for Briton sentenced to death

13 April 2012

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has raised last-minute hopes that a Briton due to hang on next month may be reprieved.

Former territorial Army soldier Mirza Tahir Hussain is due to die at dawn in Pakistan on his 36th birthday on October 1, despite having his murder conviction quashed.

The former soldier from Leeds, was accused of killing a taxi driver in 1988, acquitted by the Lahore High Court, and then convicted again by Pakistan's Federal Sharia Court.

The case has been described as "riddled with discrepancies", and foreign secretary Margaret Beckett appealed to President Musharraf earlier this year to halt the execution.

Now the President - who rejected clemency demands last year - has voiced his own doubts during talks with MEPs in Brussels.

At a meeting of the all-party European Parliament's Friends of Pakistan group, the President responded to concerns raised by the condemned man's MEPs.

"I have received those pleas and appreciate your concern for this individual," he said.

"You must understand that I have to work within the constraints of the law, but I am willing to find a solution to this case that goes over and above what the courts are able to do."

Liberal Democrat MEP for the North West of England Sajjad Karim said: "I, and the whole of the UK Liberal Democrat delegation, have been leading a European Parliament campaign to prevent what would be a gross miscarriage of justice.

"It is the 11th hour and time is running out to end the suffering of Mirza Tahir Hussain and for his distraught family and all of us who have been working tirelessly to secure his release."

Conservative MEP for York Edward McMillan-Scott said: "This is a complex and sensitive case.

"President Musharraf made it very clear to me that he did not want my constituent to hang, that he had closely examined the case, and that he had asked his staff to find a way out."

Mr Hussain, who has dual UK-Pakistan nationality, had just arrived in Pakistan to visit his family's ancestral home when the incident which has kept him in jail for the next 18 years occurred.

He ordered a taxi from Rawalpindi to Bhubar, and later told police that the taxi driver tried to sexually assault him at gunpoint.

In a scuffle, the gun went off and the driver was killed.

Mr Hussain drove the taxi off and gave himself up to the first policemen he saw.

He was charged with murder but his conviction in court was quashed on appeal.

However, pressure from the dead taxi driver's family prompted a new trial in 1998 - this time in the sharia religious court.

The result was a 2-1 majority murder verdict, with the minority judge issuing a 60 page "dissenting opinion" that the conviction was a "miscarriage of justice".

Human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Islamic Human Rights Commission, have expressed concern about the case.

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