Pakistan postpones execution of Briton
'Pakistan Times' Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf has granted a one-month stay of execution for a British man held on death row for 18 years for the murder of a taxi driver, the foreign office said.

Mirza Tahir Hussain, from Leeds in northern England, was due to hang next month shortly after his 36th birthday.

The decision follows a campaign by Hussain's brother Amjad, who travelled to Pakistan to beg for mercy, together with appeals to President Musharraf by the British government.

"The President has granted a one-month extension on the application of the family," foreign office spokeswoman Ms Tasnim Aslam said. It will take effect from June 1, when an earlier month-long stay of execution was due to run out.

"This is basically if the victim's family and the accused can work out something during that period," she said.

Amjad Hussain told BBC; "This is great news, but it is only a step in the right direction," he was quoted as saying.

A government official in Islamabad said that President Musharraf had postponed the execution to allow Hussain's family to settle the issue under Islamic law with the relatives of the dead man.

Mirza Hussain, of dual British-Pakistani nationality, was convicted in 1989 of the murder of a taxi driver in the city of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad.

An official at the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, where Mirza Hussain is being held, said they had not been told of any order.

British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett wrote to President Musharraf last week urging him to commute the death sentence.

International Development Secretary Hilary Benn also wrote to the President of Pakistan in his capacity as Hussain's local parliamentarian.●