President Pervez Musharraf has commuted the death sentence against a British man who has spent 18 years behind bars disputing his conviction on charges of shooting dead a taxi driver, the interior minister said on Thursday. British and European officials, human rights activists and relatives of the inmate praised the decision to spare the life of Mirza Tahir Hussain, 36, who was convicted of killing Jamshed Khan shortly after arriving in Pakistan in 1988. Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said President Musharraf on Wednesday converted Hussain’s death sentence to life in prison. A British High Commission official in Islamabad praised Musharraf for commuting Hussain’s sentence on “humanitarian grounds”.