 British parliamentarians have asked Pakistan to spare the life of a British national due to be hanged for murder on June 3, officials said on Wednesday. Mirza Tahir Hussain, from Leeds and of Pakistani descent, was arrested in Rawalpindi in 1988 on charges of murdering and robbing a taxi driver who had reportedly tried to physically and sexually assault him.
| If I'm ever stoopid enough to go to Pakland, I hope to hell I'm not stoopid enough to take a cab. |
Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said that the Pakistan High Commission in London had received some letters from non-governmental organisations and British parliamentarians regarding the case. Diplomatic sources said that the British government was expected to request President General Pervez Musharraf to commute Hussain's death sentence, while Aslam noted that the president had turned down Hussain's appeal for mercy last year. Imprisoned since the age of 18, Hussain is due to be executed two days before his 36th birthday. Though acquitted of murder by a Pakistani high court, the country's Federal Shariat Court sentenced Hussain to death by hanging in 1998 — a sentence upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003, which had rejected a review petition the following year. |