By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, May 8 2007 (IPS)

“Many think I escaped the noose because of my nationality. That may be so, but if you ask me, I got a new lease of life because God meant me to live.”

It is the same unfaltering faith in God that helped Mirza Tahir Hussain live through 18 gruelling years behind bars in Pakistani prisons.

A native of Leeds, England, the 36-year old Briton spent half his life with the death sentence balanced, like the sword of Damocles, over his head for the murder of a taxi driver. This, he says, was committed in self-defence. Though found innocent in a criminal court, Hussain was sentenced to death by the religious Federal Shariat Court in 1988. Mounting international pressure brought on by his brother’s tireless campaign finally led to his release last year.

“It took nearly two decades to get my brother off death row in Pakistan – an incredibly draining time during which our family endured emotional agony,” said Mirza Amjad Hussain, who left no stone unturned to gain his brother’s freedom.

Six months after his release, sitting in his home in Leeds, Hussain looks back on the time he spent in prison. Mired in what he describes as a judicial system corrupt to the core, he still marvels at how death evaded him.

“It’s a strange convoluted mix of laws – a dangerous hotchpotch of civil and Islamic law, neither of which is enforced in true spirit or form. It is the most dangerous tool used at the convenience of the rich and the influential, not necessarily to provide justice. I should know, I was acquitted and then sentenced,” he says in a long-distance interview conducted over the Internet.

He also feels very strongly that violence cannot be resolved by state violence. “I believe that criminals should be prosecuted and held accountable, but do they have to be punished with death?” The death penalty is cruel and unnecessary.

In Pakistan, he says, each criminal case comes with its own price tag with money exchanging hands at all levels. “If you can pay through your nose, justice will be on your side.”

Little wonder then that Pakistani prisons are filled with a vast population belonging to the very poorest in society, some of them falsely accused, he says.

“For criminals belonging to the affluent class and even those from the middle class, cases are not even registered. And if for some reason they have been, the victim’s family is coerced and threatened till a compromise is reached.”

Hussain adds: “In some cases, in connivance with the police, the case is made out to be weak. If that fails and the case somehow finds its way into the court room, huge sums are exchanged to minimise punishment or to turn a death penalty to a life term.” There were healthy people declared mentally ill by the prison administration so they could “escape the gallows”.

According to a newly-released report by Amnesty International, “nearly a third of the world’s 24,000 death row prisoners are in Pakistan”.

With inefficient government-appointed defence lawyers, “who are completely indifferent to their clients’ plight” and appalling living conditions, living on death row in Pakistan “is like living in your grave”, says Hussain.

Death row cells are no bigger than 3.6 metres by 2.7 metres with “between 10 – 12 prisoners crammed together like animals,” he says, adding, “we had to take turns even to sleep”.

Because of serious flaws in the judicial system and evidence of miscarriages of justice, Hussain is deeply concerned over the convictions handed down in Pakistan. “Like me, many of Pakistan’s death row inmates are innocent or had unfair trials, but unlike me they are likely to meet a cruel death with no one there to save them. How many innocent lives need to be taken before capital punishment can be abolished?” he asks.

Amnesty International in its recent report ‘The death penalty worldwide: developments in 2006’, singled out Pakistan for its “unfair trials”, together with Iraq and Sudan.

Some of Pakistan’s 7,000 death row inmates facing imminent execution are juvenile prisoners – despite a 2000 decree banning this, says Hussain. “I saw them on death row, even after the ban,” says Hussain. “Their ages were conveniently increased by the authorities in connivance with the magistrate.” He says he cannot forget the execution of a 16-year old boy from a village and who had worked as a labourer. “He was the sole breadwinner and had been falsely implicated. You cannot fathom the mental anguish we (other inmates) all went through at his death.”

Amnesty International has confirmed that Pakistan executed one child offender last year. Pakistan had abolished the juvenile death penalty, “but there had been problems concerning the nationwide compliance with the law”.

Amnesty International places Pakistan third on the list of 25 countries known to have in total executed at least 1,591 last year. China executed 1,010, Iran 177 and then came Pakistan with 82, Iraq 65, Sudan 65 and the U.S. 53. These six countries, alone account for 91 percent of all executions carried out worldwide in 2006.

On the eve of the release of the Amnesty International report with these figures, its director in Britain Kate Allen said: “We urgently need to see ‘death penalty governments’ issuing bans on all imminent executions, especially President Musharraf in Pakistan.”

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