Pakistan Delays Hanging As Briton Seeks Blood Money Deal

President Pervez Musharraf has granted a one-month stay of execution to a Briton facing death by hanging in Pakistan for the murder of a taxi driver 18 years ago.

Mirza Tahir Hussain, born in Pakistan but raised in Leeds, was sentenced to death by an Islamic court in 1998 and was due to hang on June 1, his 36th birthday. He has always protested his innocence.

Gen Musharraf delayed the sentence after appeals from the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, and the European Parliament president, Josep Borrell Fontelles, who said the case represented "a rare combination of excessive cruelty and profound injustice".

"The president wants to give him time to work out a mutually acceptable solution with the [victim's] family," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam. Under Pakistan's Islamic laws the family of the victim can pardon a murderer in return for blood money.

Hussain's brother Amjad, who has flown to Islamabad seeking his release, said: "I'm not celebrating. It's a small step in the right direction."

Supporters say Hussain is the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice that highlights the failings of Pakistan's confusing and notoriously corrupt judicial system. After leaving the Territorial Army in 1988, 18-year-old Hussain travelled to Pakistan to visit relatives.

He alleges that he was physically and sexually assaulted by a taxi driver, Jamshad Khan, on the way to his family home near Rawalpindi. Khan was shot in the ensuing tussle. Hussain insists he shot the taxi driver in self defence using Khan's pistol.

After several trials Hussain was acquitted in 1996 by the high court, which found the original evidence severely flawed. But he was retried by an Islamic court that found him guilty under Sharia law.

President Musharraf rejected a final clemency plea last year. Amnesty International has called for a retrial. Now his easiest chance of salvation may be to negotiate a deal with Khan's family.

But a lawyer for the family, which rejected an £18,000 offer in 1992, warned there would be no compromise over what he described as a "brutal, barbaric and gruesome" killing.

Hussain has spent almost half his life in Adiala Jail, an overcrowded facility in Rawalpindi where he shares a cell with four other prisoners and relies on relatives for food.

He has turned to religion and reading for solace yet also suffers "serious emotional psychological problems," said his brother, Amjad.

Sajjad Karim, an MEP for North West England, said he would personally deliver a clemency plea to Gen Musharraf later this week.

"This case presents Pakistani authorities with a chance to right a wrong, and to show a face to the world not often seen," he said.