Smash hit

He is a far cry from the 18-year-old Yorkshire lad, a part-time member of the Territorial Army, who left Leeds in December 1988 to visit relatives in Pakistan. It was his first solo visit to the country of his birth, and after flying to Karachi he took a train to Rawalpindi, and then a taxi to his ancestral village.

During that last journey the driver, Jamshed Khan, was killed. Hussain claims that Khan pulled a gun, tried to assault him and was shot in the ensuing scuffle. Hussain drove the car to the nearest police post, but was promptly arrested.

He was sentenced to death for murder in 1989, but in 1992 a High Court ordered a retrial. In 1994 another court sentenced him to life imprisonment, but two years later the High Court acquitted him. Before Hussain was freed, however, the High Court referred his case to a Sharia court that claims jurisdiction over cases of highway robbery. In that trial in 1998, one of the judges said that the visiting Briton had been framed by police, who had lied in court. But Hussain was given the death penalty by a two-to-one margin and the country’s Sharia Supreme Court rejected subsequent appeals.

()

Hussain’s family has enlisted the support of MPs, MEPs and pressure groups including Amnesty International. They have offered the driver’s family what his elder brother, Amjad, describes as a “very substantial sum” — believed to be approaching £100,000 — in blood money. Hussain said that the driver’s family — from the Pathan tribe — initially accepted, then changed their minds. “It seems someone intervened and said, ‘You’re selling your son’s blood and bones’,” he suggested.

Mr Blair raised the case with General Musharraf during his visit to Britain last week. Mr Musharraf, despite giving a thumbs-up sign to a shouted question about whether he would free Hussein, claims that he has no power to intervene — a claim that Hussain hotly disputes. From a sheaf of papers by his side he pulled a handwritten quotation from a State prosecutor citing Article 45 of the country’s constitution giving the President “absolute powers to pardon”.

Hussain refused to discuss the killing beyond insisting that it was self- defence. He said that it was “too painful”. For the same reason he appeared loath to discuss his life in Yorkshire, apart from recalling how he would visit the sports centre, play draughts and hang out. “It feels like I’ve never been in England,” he said.

He also talked with evident anguish about the suffering that his case had caused his family, the costs they had borne in fighting for his release, and of how his father had died, broken- hearted, four years ago. What sustained him was his faith, he said. “We are guided by Islamic teaching not to despair.” After rising at 4am, he spends most of the day praying, studying and reading the Koran. From the plastic bucket in which he keeps his few possessions he pulled a succession of religious books, the sole exception being an English-Urdu dictionary. “I used to read novels, but as time passed I progress to more serious books.”

Right now, he needs all the spiritual sustenance he can get. Since May General Musharraf, under British pressure, has issued three stays of execution, but the last expired on Sunday. He is safe during Ramadan, but the moment that the festival of Eid ends on October 27 he will be vulnerable again, and there is a limit to how long the President can equivocate.

Hussain still hopes for freedom, but he has watched many cellmates go to their deaths over the years and said that he had got used to the idea. “As a human being everyone is scared of death to some extent. But as a Muslim we are happy to meet our Creator at any moment. We are brought up to think we should be awaiting death at any time.”

Before leaving, he asked if he could question me. He wondered where I lived in London, whether I was married, and how many children I had. Three, I answered. “I pray for them to have a good life,” he said. “Tell them about me and beware of bad countries and listen to you and their elders.”

THE VERDICTS

1970 Mirza-Tahir Hussain is born in Pakistan

1978 He moves with his family to Britain and settles in Leeds

December 1988 Hussain, 18, flies to Pakistan to visit relatives. He is arrested after the death of his taxi driver near Rawalpindi. Hussein claims that he shot the driver in self-defence

September 1989 A sessions court in Islamabad sentences him to death for murder. He is also convicted of highway robbery

November 1992 The High Court orders a retrial

April 1994 A sessions court in Islamabad sentences him to life imprisonment

May 1996 High Court acquits Hussein of murder, but a month later refers the case to the Federal Sharia Court, which has jurisdiction over cases of highway robbery

May 1998 The Sharia court sentences him to death by two votes to one

December 2003 The Supreme Sharia Court of Pakistan rejects the appeal

May 2006 President Musharraf issues the first of three stays of execution. The last one expired on

October 1 October 26 Ramadan and festival of Eid end, meaning that Hussain can be hanged after this date barring another stay of execution

Times Recommends

• Tehran cannot live up to its rhetoric
• The new unicycle that will ‘change the world’
• We cannot wish away Iran’s bomb