Mirza Tahir Hussain

Speech delivered on Mon 23rd Oct 2006

Mr President, I want to ask the presidency of Parliament as well as MEPs across the spectrum to continue to press for the EU, as well as the UK authorities, to try to persuade President Musharraf of Pakistan urgently to use his powers to pardon or at least commute the sentence of Mirza Tahir Hussain.

Mr Hussain is a dual British-Pakistani citizen who has been on death row for 18 years, convicted of a murder of which he has always protested his innocence. Indeed, he was only convicted in the Islamic Sharia courts after having been acquitted in the normal secular courts. We learned last week that the date for his execution had been postponed for another two months, putting it beyond the date this week when the heir to the British throne, the Prince of Wales, makes an official visit to Pakistan.

However, I urge everyone to keep up their efforts to persuade President Musharraf to use his undoubted powers under the Constitution to resolve this situation in the sense of justice and not just postpone the execution.