A British man who spent 18 years in a Pakistani jail for a murder he says he didn’t commit, was released on Friday, the Pakistani interior minister said.
President Pervez Musharraf commuted Mirza Tahir Hussain’s death sentence on Wednesday after the British government and rights groups had pleaded for clemency for the 36-year-old from Leeds in northern England.
”He was released this morning,” Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao told Reuters. ”I don’t know if he has left Pakistan or not.”
”He’s a free man. It’s up to him whether he stays here or not,” Sherpao later told Geo Television.
Hussain, a British Muslim of Pakistani descent, was convicted of killing a taxi driver in Islamabad in 1988.
He said the man had tried to sexually assault him and then threatened him with a gun, which went off when they struggled.
He was originally acquitted by Pakistan’s High Court, but an Islamic court sentenced him to death in 1998. The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003, and a review petition was rejected a year later.
But the government had put off his execution several times, most recently until the end of the year, and officials said they were trying to find a way to spare him.
Authorities had hoped a blood-money settlement, permitted under Islamic law, could be reached with the dead man’s family.
But the relatives had refused to negotiate, saying to do so would be dishonourable.
A lawyer for the taxi driver’s family said earlier on Friday they were preparing to file a petition with the Supreme Court to stop Hussain’s release.
Rights groups and British parliamentarians said Hussain was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, as did the dissenting judge in the Islamic court that convicted him.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who according to Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry is due to visit Islamabad in the next week, on Thursday welcomed Musharraf’s role in resolving the case.
Prince Charles, who had also discussed the case with Musharraf during a visit to Pakistan in October, said in a statement on Thursday he was ”very pleased” with the decision.
The British High Commission in Islamabad declined to comment on the case.
Grey-bearded and overweight after spending half his life in jail, Hussain bears little resemblance to the slim 18-year-old who set out to visit his family’s ancestral homeland. – Reuters