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."
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
Nauru said it would hold a referendum to change its official name, described as a colonial relic from a time when “foreign tongues” mangled the native language. Nauru would change its name to Naoero to “more faithfully honor our nation’s heritage, our language and our identity,” Nauruan President David Adeang said in a statement on Tuesday. The Pacific island nation’s native language is Dorerin Naoero, which is spoken by the vast majority of its approximately 10,000 inhabitants. “Nauru emerged because Naoero could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues, and was changed not by our choice, but for convenience,” the government said in
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS