Time is running out for Hussain, who is 36 and from Leeds. After 18 years in Pakistani prisons, a bewildering series of trials and retrials and a desperate campaign to save him that has attracted even Tony Blair’s support, he faces execution within a month. One morning he will be blindfolded before dawn, taken to the gallows in Rawalpindi Central Jail, and hanged for a murder of which he insists he is innocent.

Hussain is still fighting, however. During a long, unauthorised interview inside that prison yesterday, he passed The Times a handwritten appeal urging Mr Blair to intervene with President Musharraf, calling on the Pakistani leader to commute his sentence, and begging the family of his alleged victim to “show mercy and forgive me” during Ramadan — “the month of forgiveness, compassion and mercy”. He hopes that international pressure on Pakistan might yet save him, or that the dead man’s relatives might relent and accept the tens of thousands of pounds in “blood money” that his family has offered in return for a pardon under Sharia.

But Hussain, who has spent half his life in prison, conceded that death would at least put an end to his suffering. “I feel I’m on a life-support machine,” he said. “I’m looking forward to ending this whole thing one way or another. Mentally one reaches such a state that we need some decisions.”

Nor, having embraced Islam in prison, does he particularly fear the manner of his looming execution. “It doesn’t matter, because as a Muslim such things are already decided by almighty Allah — how we live and when we die and by which method. The most important thing is that Allah is pleased with us when we meet him, and not angry.”

Rawalpindi jail is a huge, high-walled complex that houses 5,200 inmates a few miles outside the city and has signs for vistors that are sponsored, bizarrely, by Pepsi. Each weekday morning hundreds of Pakistanis queue for hours to see their imprisoned relatives; The Times gained access to Mr Hussain with surprisingly little difficulty by posing as a family friend from Leeds.

Like the other visitors, we brought a bag of fruit and milk, and passed through the security barriers with few real checks beyond a cursory frisking. Once inside, we were led through well-tended gardens to the one-storey death-row blocks, each built around a garden, where 484 condemned men await the noose. It was grim, but less so than many an American death row.

In front of each cell there is a small forecourt enclosed by bars where the prisoners can exercise for two hours a day, one in the morning and one in the evening. That is where we found Hussain. He was squatting on the floor and reading a book called The Most Beautiful Names of Allah brought to him — along with newspapers, magazines such as Time and Newsweek, and the latest articles about his case — by a British High Commission official who visits him weekly.

“Please sit down,” he said politely, gesturing towards a blue plastic stool. For the next hour we chatted in the midday warmth about his case, his life in prison and even English cricket.

Hussain shares Cell 72 with two other convicted murderers, who wear brown prison uniforms. At one point he rose with obvious tiredness to his feet and pulled back a rug across the door to show me the interior. It measured 12ft by 8ft. There were two high windows, barred and glassless, and a basic hole-in-the-floor latrine hidden behind a blanket. There are no beds — the inmates sleep on blankets on the bare floor.

He said the twice-daily meals were not bad, and the prisoners had small stoves on which they could cook food brought in from outside.

Once a keen cricketer, he still follows Yorkshire’s fortunes and listens to Test matches on the radio. The “clash of civilisations” had extended even to cricket, he joked at one point, referring to the ball- tampering row that aborted the England-Pakistan Test in August.

But prison has taken its toll. Hussein looks much older than his 36 years. His swept-back hair is turning grey and he has a long, white beard. He shuffles, and complains of poor physical health and failing memory. He is now fluent in Urdu, but speaks English with a Pakistani accent.

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