Comment
Response to appeals for Mirza's life frustrating

Qudsia Kadri

As Islamabad prepares to welcome Prince Charles and Duchess of Cornwall, the execution of Mirza Tahir Hussain on November the 1st looms as a miserable end to Tahir's life after having spent 18 years in jail in Rawalpindi. An unnamed aide of President Musharraf was quoted yesterday by the Daily Telegraph newspaper in London as dismissing suggestions by Hussain's family that the Pakistani president could pardon him-"it would be seen to have been done under Western pressure" the aide was quoted in the daily Telegraph.
Reading the above statement from President Musharraf's aide, comes not only as an extreme surprise but also brings out a sense of frustration and anger. A dichotomy of questionable actions in the recent past on "pressure related" assignments carried out in the country does not really give credibility to the aide's comments.
We are left wondering as to why and how the implication of "pressure is applicable to a case which apart from the humane compassionate grounds on which clemency is sought, is in itself ridden with false and concocted police evidence, no eye-witnesses, and conflicting versions of the prosecution to firstly convict Mirza Tahir under the secular laws of the country and having failed to do that after Tahir was acquitted twice by the Honourable Lahore High Court to keep taking his case back to the Shariat Court which pronounced him guilty after his acquittal.
Islamic law or Shariah was not prescribed to legalise vengeance without establishing unequivocal guilt (which was totally missing in Mirza's case and further endorsed by the dissenting judge of the Shariah Bench Justice Abdul Waheed Siddiqui). Sentences in Islam are certainly harsh, but stricter yet are the requisite procedures to be observed before a man may be convicted and handed out a death penalty-and taken to the gallows. Indeed, the Lord Almighty has also repeatedly set forth in the Holy Quran the importance of justice and 'adal'. Based on truth and 'Shahadat' to a crime, of pious truthful witnesses, and not a chain of events with changeable twisted turn of happenings and witnesses produced by the police known for their corrupt and devious methods of fabricating evidence when their channels to elicit bribes have failed.
To a young, clueless 18 year old Mirza Tahir in 1988, Pakistan was the country of his birth and he had been in this land of the pure for just a day when unforeseen, unplanned tragedy and disaster struck and Tahir's holiday to Pakistan turned into eighteen-long years of hell, culminating if the President does not intervene, to the gallows. President Musharraf has the cover of the constitution, as per article 45. The President would not be entering the "sphere of the judiciary" as he recently on his visit to UK told a section of the electronic media in an interview in Britain. The President must know surely that it is normally and usually "democratic leaders" which have the complete authority and guarantee of constitutions to pass legislation. It is in democratic nations that presidents exercise their power to "grant pardon, reprieve and respite and to commute, suspend any sentence passed by any court tribunal or other authority. And it is not the other way around-despotic, tyrannical and authoritarian leaders and countries do not subscribe to this constitutional guarantee. The question of "foreign pressure" does not even arise we feel, the British Prime Minister and Prince Charles need not even have spoken to President Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. The hanging if it does take place will be a blot on the essence of Islam and the justice of the judicial systems in the country. It will indeed be a sad day in the judiciary of Pakistan when Mirza Tahir is hanged.
"You are numerous, and I am alone-you may do unto me what you wish; the wolves prey upon the lamb in the darkness of the night, but the blood stains remain upon the stones in the valley until the dawn comes, and sun reveals the crime to all." - (Khalil Gibran)