July 11, 2006	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Sani 14, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, July 10: Senior politicians from the ruling party are confident that Mirza Tahir Hussain, a British National and a murder convict whose execution was stayed by President Pervez Musharraf for a month, will finally be pardoned.

A senior politician told Dawn that he along with another legislator was negotiating with the family of a taxi driver, Jamshid Khan, for whose murdered Mr Hussain was sentenced to death.

Negotiations are continuing with the family of the deceased since May 23, when the execution has been stayed by the president, he said. The one-month period ended on Monday.

“We have not yet convinced the victim’s family to pardon the murder convict,” he said, adding that “Rest assured Mr Hussain will not be executed and we are confident in this regard.”

The relatives of Mr Hussain are also negotiating with the family members of the taxi driver, living in Mohmand Agency and Rawalpindi, but the result is same despite the fact that they have offered heavy blood money.

Head of the medial section of British High Commission Aidan Liddle told Dawn that the family of Mr Hussain would again request the president for a stay in execution or mercy if the court of law fixed an execution date on the request of Adiala Jail administration.

He said the British High Commission would help and facilitate the family members of Mr Hussain in this regard.

Superintendent and deputy superintendent of Adiala Jail were not available for their comments despite several attempts.

However, according to the legal procedure the jail administration is bound to request the court of law to fix an execution date for death sentence convict.

Earlier, President of European Parliament Josep Borrel Fontells has asked President Gen Pervez Musharraf not to hang the British national.

Mr Hussain has already spent 18 years on the death row in Pakistan. He was just 18 and on a family visit to Pakistan in 1989 when his tribulations started with the taxi he had hired to take him to his hometown near Chakwal.

On the way, he claims, the taxi driver and his accomplice, whom he had insisted was for safety, tried to rob and sexually assault him at gunpoint. During the scuffle, the taxi driver suffered a bullet injury which claimed his life. District and session court that tried him on murder charge sentenced him to death. But the same court, on the direction of the Lahore High Court, where Mr Hussain had gone into appeal, reviewed the sentenced and changed it into life term.

He challenged the lowered sentence too, this time in the Shariat Court which enhanced the sentence to death. That bad turn in his vaccinating fate made him approach the Supreme Court which retained the death penalty.

His last appeal lay with the president who also rejected his mercy petition earlier.

Hussain’s all legal proceedings from district court, Lahore High Court, Federal Shariat Court to Supreme Court took 18 years which he spent in the jail. Still his hope for life now hangs with a thin thread.