Mirza Tahir Hussain outside a court in Rawalpindi, 1993

BRITAIN. BLAIR ASKS MUSHARRAF TO STOP BRITON BEING HANGED

May 18, 2006: Britain asked Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf to stop the hanging of Mirza Tahir Hussain, a British man convicted of shooting dead a taxi driver 18 years ago. Hussain is due to face the gallows on June 3, two days after his 36th birthday, having spent half his life in jail.
"The British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, on her behalf and on behalf of Prime Minister Tony Blair, has written a letter to President Musharraf requesting him to commute the death sentence of Hussain to an appropriate term of imprisonment," a British diplomat in Islamabad said.
"The letter was delivered to Pakistan's Foreign Office [on May 18]," a spokesperson for the British High Commission said.
Hussain, who is of Pakistani descent and according to Pakistani officials holds dual nationality, was arrested in Rawalpindi in 1988.
He was charged with murdering and robbing a taxi driver who he says had tried to physically and sexually assault him. Hussain maintained that the man had pulled a gun on him and it went off during a struggle.
Hussain was acquitted by the country's High Court but an Islamic Court -- the Federal Shariat Court -- sentenced him to death by hanging in 1998. The sentence was later upheld by the country's Supreme Court in 2003, and a review petition was rejected a year later. Several British parliamentarians have pleaded for Pakistan to exercise mercy, while the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission said there had been a "miscarriage of justice". (Sources: Reuters, 18/05/2006)