After spending half his life in a grim Pakistani jail, Tahir Mirza Hussain is due to hang on his 36th birthday for killing a taxi driver -- although a court acquitted him 10 years ago.
The British-Pakistani man, who claims he's innocent, was cleared by a secular court, but then retried and found guilty in an Islamic one and now faces execution on June 1 -- unless President Pervez Musharraf intervenes.
His muddled case, spanning two decades, is emblematic of Pakistan's corrupt and contradictory legal system that a leading rights activist described as "warped" 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's 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 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?" he asked.
Mirza Hussain's family migrated to England from Pakistan when he was a boy. In December 1988, after completing training in Britain's reserve army, the 18-year-old came back to visit relatives living near Chakwal, about 90km south of Islamabad. On his way there, he claims the driver of the taxi he'd hired stopped the car and 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 wounded.
Hussain voluntarily reported the incident to police, but was arrested, and in September 1989 was sentenced to death.
A high court, however, revoked the death penalty in November 1992 due to serious discrepancies in the prosecution case and ordered a retrial. In April 1994 his sentence was reduced to life in prison and then in May 1996 the high court acquitted Hussain of all charges.
But a week later, while he was waiting for release, the case was referred to the Islamic, or Shariah court, on the basis that the crime he was charged with -- armed robbery -- came under its jurisdiction.
In August 1998, in a split 2-1 verdict, the Shariah court's three 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 case in a detailed 59-page opinion.
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 investigators had introduced false witnesses and "fabricated evidence in a shameless manner" to prove the defendant as "a desperate and habitual" bandit although he 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. Last year, Musharraf rejected his mercy petition.
Legal experts say Pakistan's police and judiciary are rarely noted for their integrity, and having both secular and Islamic laws 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 are parallel and overlapping jurisdictions. There should be just one set of laws dealing with offenses in Pakistan,'' he said.
Former military dictator General Zia ul-Haq introduced Shariah law to Pakistan in 1979, two decades after the Islamic nation was born. Jilani described the resultant legal system as "warped."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS