Pakistan Set to Hang Acquitted British Man

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - After spending half his life in a Pakistani jail, Tahir Mirza Hussain is scheduled to hang on his 36th birthday for killing a taxi driver _ even though a court acquitted him 10 years ago.

Hussain, a British-Pakistani, claims he is innocent. He was cleared by a secular court but retried and found guilty in an Islamic one. He now faces execution June 1 unless President Gen. Pervez Musharraf intervenes.

His muddled case, spanning two decades, is emblematic of Pakistan's corrupt and bifurcated legal system, described by a leading rights activist as "flawed" and in desperate need of reform.

Amnesty International has called for a retrial, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett have urged Musharraf to reconsider Hussain's sentence. He has already served 18 years in a cramped, dark cell, mostly at the notorious Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi near the capital.

"What does he have to do to get justice?" said his elder brother Amjad Hussain, who is visiting from Leeds, northern England, to lobby for Hussain's life. "How could you retry a man who was acquitted?"

Mirza Hussain's family migrated to England from Pakistan when he was a boy. In December 1988, after training in Britain's reserve army, the 18-year-old came back to visit relatives living near Chakwal, about 56 miles south of Islamabad. On his way, he claims, his taxi driver stopped the car, produced a gun and physically and sexually assaulted him. In the struggle that followed the gun went off and the driver, Jamshad Khan, was fatally injured.

Hussain voluntarily reported the incident to police and was arrested. In September 1989, a sessions court sentenced him to death.

The high court revoked the death penalty in November 1992 due to serious discrepancies in the prosecution's case and ordered a retrial. In April 1994 his sentence was reduced to life in prison; in May 1996 the high court acquitted Hussain of all charges.

But a week later, while he was waiting for release, his case was referred to the Islamic, or Sharia, court on the basis that the crime he was charged of _ "haraabah," or armed robbery _ came under its jurisdiction.

In August 1998, in a split 2-1 verdict, the Islamic court's judges sentenced him to death again, although the legal provision he was tried under required a confession or witness to the crime. The prosecution had neither.

The dissenting judge, Abdul Waheed Siddiqui, gave a scathing assessment of the prosecution in a 59-page judgment. He described Hussain as "an innocent, raw youth not knowing the mischief and filth in which the police of this country is engrossed." He said police introduced false witnesses and "fabricated evidence in a shameless manner" against Hussein, who had no criminal record.

Amnesty and other rights groups have condemned the trial as unfair, but Pakistan's government maintains Hussain has been treated with due process. In 2005, Musharraf, an advocate of moderate Islam, rejected his mercy petition.

Pakistan's police and judiciary are rarely noted for their integrity, and legal experts say having both secular and Sharia law at work only allows for more abuse.

"It's a basic and fundamental flaw with our criminal justice system," said Hina Jilani, vice-chair of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. "There should be just one set of laws."

The dueling jurisdictions have come into play in other high-profile cases, including the prosecution of the attackers of Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani women who was gang-raped on the orders of a village council in 2002 over her younger brother's alleged affair with a woman from a higher caste family. The Supreme Court is still deliberating whether the case falls under the jurisdiction of a secular or Islamic court.

Former military dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq introduced Shariah law to Pakistan in 1979, two decades after the Islamic nation was born. His controversial Hudood Ordinance, which covers offenses such as adultery, rape and theft, requires four male witnesses to prosecute a rape.

Hussain's case also falls under the Hudood Ordinance. His only hope now is presidential intervention or reconciliation with the dead taxi driver's ethnic Pashtun family through a settlement.

Amjad Hussain said his late father offered financial compensation back in 1990 but it was rejected. The deceased's family have since refused the mediation efforts of a prominent Islamic cleric. Amjad Hussain claims the family, which could not be reached for comment, has threatened to kill his brother if he is released.

Amjad Hussain shook his head as he recounted how his brother has grayed in prison, suffered psychological problems and become resigned to his fate _ finding solace in Islam, in whose name he's been jailed.

"Sometimes he just feels like getting this over and done with. He once told me don't bother to try and help, because whatever God ordains is going to happen," Amjad Hussain said. "That scares me."

Amjad Hussain shows photograph, of his brother Tahir Mirza Hussain, left, sits with his father Mirza Fazal Hussain holding his nephew outside a court in Rawalpindi, taken in 1993 in Islamabad Saturday May 20, 2006. After spending half his life in a grim Pakistani jail, the British-Pakistani man Tahir Mirza Hussain is due to hang on his 36th birthday for killing a taxi driver _ although a court acquitted him 10 years ago. Amnesty International has called for a retrial, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett have urged President Musharraf to reconsider Hussain's sentence. (AP Photo/B.K.Bangash)

2 posted on 05/20/2006 12:21:50 PM PDT by freepatriot32 (Holding you head high & voting Libertarian is better then holding your nose and voting republican)

3 posted on 05/20/2006 12:25:10 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker (Immigration: Acting like dupes does not earn us their respect, but their CONTEMPT.))

Pakistan is a flawed construct of a nation....

The lunatics who could no longer live peacefully, side by side with the Hindu and Sikhs in India --- were "segregated" in their detached "insane asylums" of Pakistan and Bangladesh...

Remember?

To date -- in spite of many years in international business - I have yet to meet a Pakistani I could trust in any business or personal matter...

The sample size was certainly large enough, that I should have met at least several.... But didn't....

Semper Fi

4 posted on 05/20/2006 12:30:27 PM PDT by river rat (You may turn the other cheek, but I prefer to look into my enemy's vacant dead eyes.)

Islamic animals.

Swedish girl raped by members of the Religion of Peace

How can you say such a thing? Bite your tongue /sarcasm

7 posted on 05/20/2006 1:09:02 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker (Immigration: Acting like dupes does not earn us their respect, but their CONTEMPT.))

Yet another ROP case of justice....why we even bother with the scum is beyond me. They are not our friends, and only pretend to get along because it boosts their stature.

The ROP's thirst for blood reminds me so much of PLanned Parenthood's thirst....any excuse at all - and if the law doesn't help, then make it up...and buy your own judges.

"He was cleared by a secular court but retried and found guilty in an Islamic one."

Coming soon to Western Europe!

(Western Europeans are tired of that burdonsome, boring, old-hat, racist, sexist, homophobe Western Civilization anyway. Why not try something new???)

If he was acquitted by any court, that should have been the end of it! Religious courts belong to a much, much earlier age, when faith and doctrine meant more than the truth.

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