PAKISTAN. BRITISH NATIONAL AGAIN ON DEATH ROW

Mirza Tahir Hussain, a British man convicted of killing a taxi driver in Pakistan, has been put on death row for a third time and will be hanged on August 3, relatives and officials said. Hussain, 36, of Pakistani descent, twice had his execution stayed on the intervention of President Pervez Musharraf. His family was given one month’s time from June 1 to reach a settlement with the relatives of the dead man.
A judge in Islamabad issued new death warrants for Hussain after his family failed to reach a settlement with the heirs of the victim, a prison official in Rawalpindi city where he was being held, said.
"The deceased’s family have broken all contact with us and turned down our heavy blood money offer," Hussain’s brother, Amjad Hussain said.
"We are devastated and traumatized after being told Tahir is to be executed on August 3 by the jail authorities," he said.
Under Islamic Sharia law, heirs of a victim may pardon a condemned man in return for blood money.
The jail official said execution could still be overturned if Hussain’s family reached a settlement with the victim’s heirs.
Hussain was originally acquitted by Pakistan’s High Court, but the Islamic Federal Shariat Court sentenced him to death by hanging in 1998 for the murder of the driver in 1988 in Rawalpindi.
The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003, and a review petition rejected a year later.
Hussain who was visiting Pakistan in 1988 said at his trial that the driver had tried to sexually assault him. He said the driver pulled a gun on him that went off when the two struggled.