ISLAMABAD, Sept 27: A stay on execution of British national Mirza Tahir Hussain, sentenced to death for killing a taxi-driver, will end on Oct 1, but a decision about a new date of hanging will be taken only after Eidul Fitr, because no execution takes place in the country during the month of Ramazan.

An official of the Adyala Jail administration told this correspondent on Wednesday that after the expiry of the stay, the jail superintendent would appeal to the court to issue the black warrant and fix a date for execution.

However, he said, in his opinion the new date would be after Eid.

Mirza Tahir got a new lease of life when his hanging was put off for a month by the President of Pakistan, acting on a mercy appeal from the convict’s family. The British High Commission in Pakistan assisted the family in filing the mercy plea. A source said that the family was likely to request for another stay.

According to a reliable source, the family has been assured by some senior members of the ruling party that Mirza Tahir will not be executed and that he will be pardoned.

The PML politicians, it is learnt, have been holding negotiations with the family of the murdered taxi-driver, Jamshid Khan, in an effort to save the convict’s life.

So far, the family of Mirza Tahir has failed to get any concession in negotiations with relatives of the taxi-driver, living in Mohmand Agency and Rawalpindi, despite having offered a hefty amount as blood money.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, some members of his cabinet and international human rights organisations have appealed to President Pervez Musharraf to consider Mirza Tahir’s case on humanitarian grounds, because he has been in jail since 1989, and has served more than a life sentence.

He was just 18 when he came to visit his family in Pakistan that his ordeal began. He claims that the driver of the taxi he had hired in Rawalpindi to take him to his hometown near Chakwal and another person that the cabbie said accompanied him for safety reasons, tried to rob and sexually assault him at gunpoint. During the scuffle, the taxi-driver suffered a bullet injury which claimed his life.

The district and sessions court which tried him on murder charge sentenced him to death, but on the direction of the Lahore High Court, where Mirza Tahir had filed an appeal, the same court reviewed the sentence and changed it to life-term. Mirza Tahir challenged this sentence as well, this time in the Shariat Court which enhanced it to death penalty. He went to the Supreme Court which upheld the death sentence. His last appeal lay with the president who rejected his mercy petition.

His family is now pinning hopes on Thursday’s meeting in London between Mr Blair and Gen Musharraf. The family believe that the British prime minister will make fresh efforts to persuade the president to accept the mercy petition.