24 May 2006 :

Pakistan postponed the execution of Briton Mirza Tahir Hussain for a month in order to give his family the chance to reach a settlement with the family of a taxi driver he was convicted of murdering. Hussain, who is of Pakistani descent, had been set to face the gallows in early June until President Pervez Musharraf's intervention following appeals from the British government, European Parliament and the convicted man's family. Musharraf, in response to the appeal from the family, had ordered a one month postponement from June 1, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.
"During this time, they (Hussain's family) are to work out some mutually agreed arrangement with the family of the victim," she said.
Under Islamic sharia law, heirs of a victim may pardon a murderer in return for blood money. The dead man's family had dismissed a previous attempt by Hussain's family to reach a negotiated settlement.
"It is a step in the right direction but I am not joyous because it means my brother would stay in jail indefinitely," Amjad Hussain, Hussain's brother, said.
Originally from Leeds in northern England, Hussain was arrested in Rawalpindi in 1988 and charged with murdering and robbing a taxi driver, Jamshaid Khan.
Hussain was originally acquitted by Pakistan's High Court, but the Islamic Federal Shariat Court sentenced him to death by hanging in 1998. The sentence was upheld by the country's Supreme Court in 2003, and a review petition rejected a year later. Musharraf has also turned down an appeal for mercy from Hussain.