Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf yesterday commuted the death sentence of a British man in response to appeals by top British leaders, paving the way towards his freedom, officials said.
Mirza Tahir Hussain, 36, from Leeds, will instead be given a life sentence and could be eligible for release having spent the past 18 years in prison.
Britain's Prince Charles had asked that Pakistan commute Hussain's sentence, making a request to Musharraf while touring Pakistan last month and writing to Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
Charles spoke to Musharraf on the issue after a meeting in Islamabad on Oct. 30, the Times newspaper in London reported.
Pakistan had previously scheduled the hanging of Hussain to take place during the five-day royal trip but had delayed it by two months until Dec. 31.
"We are very happy over the news. It has been a long struggle for justice, but finally it has come through," Hussain's 22-year-old cousin Saeed Hussain said.
Hussain has spent nearly half his life on Pakistan's death row for murdering a taxi driver, Jamshed Khan. He claims he acted in self-defense after the driver sexually assaulted him.
He was convicted in 1989 but in 1996 he was cleared by a high court. However, an Islamic Shariah court took control of the case and imposed the death penalty.
Khan's family refused an offer of blood money from Hussain's relatives, which would have saved him from the noose.
A spokesman for the British High Commission in Islamabad said he had no information on whether Hussain's sentence had been commuted but confirmed that negotiations were ongoing.
Last month British Prime Minister Tony Blair also urged Musharraf to commute the sentence after British newspapers published a heartfelt written appeal by Hussain.
Pakistani officials had previously said that Musharraf should not be seen to be bowing to Western pressure over the case and that any move to save Hussain from the death penalty had to be taken by the courts.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion