A British man who faced execution in Pakistan for allegedly murdering a taxi driver was freed from jail yesterday, ending his 18-year fight for justice.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf commuted Mirza Tahir Hussain's death sentence to life imprisonment the previous day, following appeals by Britain's Prince Charles and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Mirza Tahir Hussain has been released this morning. He is a free person now and he can go wherever he wants to go," Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said.
Asked if the 36-year-old Hussain had been handed over to the British High Commission in Islamabad, Sherpao said: "I can only say that he has been released."
Officials said life was usually 25 years but Hussain had served enough time due to Muslim holidays and good behavior.
The British High Commission was not immediately available for comment, while officials at the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, had no details of who Hussain left with.
Hussain, from Leeds in northern England, allegedly murdered taxi driver Jamshed Khan in 1988 shortly after arriving in Pakistan to visit family. He claims he acted in self-defense after the driver sexually assaulted him.
The dual British-Pakistani national was convicted in 1989 but in 1996 he was cleared by a high court. However an Islamic Shariah court then took control of the case and sentenced him to hang.
Rights groups said he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice because he had already been cleared of the crime once.
Hussain's brother Amjad, who has led a campaign to overturn the death sentence, on Thursday hailed the end of an "18-year nightmare" and said he hoped for Mirza's rapid release so he could rebuild his shattered life.
"I knew that President Musharraf would not let us down," he told reporters in Britain. He also thanked Prince Charles, saying: "We are grateful to his royal highness for the representation that he has made."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
RSS