Pakistan commutes death sentence for Briton

ISLAMABAD, Nov 16 (Reuters) President Pervez Musharraf has commuted the death sentence for a British man who has been in jail in Pakistan for the past 18 years for a murder he says he didn't commit, Pakistan's interior minister said today.

The British government and rights groups had pleaded with Pakistan to grant clemency for Mirza Tahir Hussain, 36, from Leeds in northern England.

''The president has commuted the death sentence to life,'' Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao told Reuters, adding that his ministry was working out the modalities of his release.

President Musharraf took the decision yesterday, officials said.

While a life term is usually 25 years, with time off for good behaviour and Muslim and national holidays Hussain is believed to have served his time.

''Hopefully he will be granted total relief. He will be informed about it today,'' Tariq Azim Khan, Junior Information Minister, told Reuters.

Hussain, a British Muslim of Pakistani descent, was convicted of killing a taxi driver in 1988.

He said the man had tried to sexually assault him and then threatened him with a gun, which went off when they struggled.

Grey bearded and overweight after having spent half his life in jail, Hussain now bears little physical resemblance to the slim 18-year-old who set out on his first visit to his family's ancestral homeland.

The British High Commission issued a statement saying it welcomed reports that mercy was being shown, but it had not been been informed directly by the Pakistan government.

Hussain was originally acquitted by Pakistan's High Court, but the Islamic Federal Shariat Court sentenced him to death by hanging in 1998.

The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003, and a review petition was rejected a year later.

But the government had put off his execution several times, most recently until the end of the year, and officials said they were trying to find a way to spare him.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair raised the case with Musharraf when the Pakistani leader visited London in September.

Prince Charles also expressed interest in the case when he met President Musharraf during a visit to Pakistan at the end of October.

Authorities had repeatedly put off Hussain's hanging in the hope that a blood money settlement, permitted under Islamic law, could be reached with relatives of Jamshaid Khan, the taxi driver he was convicted of murdering in Islamabad.

But the dead man's family, which comes from a tribal region of North West Frontier Province, had refused to negotiate, saying to do so would be dishonourable.

Rights groups and British parliamentarians said Hussain was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, as did the dissenting judge in the Islamic court that convicted him.

REUTERS AKJ HT1540