PAKISTAN. PRISON AUTHORITIES ASK FOR FRESH DATE TO HANG BRITON

Pakistani prison authorities asked a court to fix a new date for the execution of a British man sentenced to hang in a case that was raised by Prime Minister Tony Blair with President Pervez Musharrafa few days earlier.
ITV had broadcast an interview with President Pervez Musharraf on October 1 in which the Pakistani leader said he would not reverse a court's decision regarding Mirza Tahir Hussain.
"I'm not a dictator," he said. "I can't violate a court judgement, whether you like the court or not," Musharraf told ITV's programme, "The Sunday Edition".
Hussain, 36, from Leeds, had spent half his life in jail since his arrest following the shooting of a taxi driver, Jamshaid Khan, in Islamabad in 1988.
The government had stayed his execution from month to month since June.
While the last stay order expired on October 1, executions do not take place during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, or the three-day Eid celebration that marks its end, meaning Hussein could not be executed before around October 27.
"We asked the court to fix the date of his execution," Abdul Rauf, the governor of the Central Jail in Rawalpindi, told Reuters. "Executions are totally banned in Ramadan, so that's why the date will be after Eid festival."
Hussain had always contended that the taxi driver tried to sexually assault him and then pulled a gun which went off when they struggled.
He was originally acquitted of the crime, but was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to death by an Islamic court in 1998, and his appeals to the Supreme Court and for a presidential pardon were subsequently turned down.
Under Pakistan's parallel Islamic legal system, Hussain could be freed if Khan's family were ready to accept compensation. But the dead man comes from a tribal part of Pakistan where family feuds can run for generations and accepting blood money is regarded as dishonourable and they had so far refused to negotiate.