| Plea for UK man facing China death | |||
Relatives of a British man on death row in China after being convicted of smuggling heroin, have appealed for a pardon as they say he is mentally ill. Akmal Shaikh is due to be put to death on Tuesday morning but cousins who visited him in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, said that he was not aware that his execution date had been set until they told him. The 53-year-old father of three was caught carrying a suitcase containing 4kg of heroin from an aircraft in 2007. His family have said that Shaikh, who was born in Pakistan but was raised in the UK, was tricked into carrying the suitcase by a gang in Poland, where he had been living for at least six years. Bipolar diagnosis Seema Khan, Shaikh's cousin, told Al Jazeera: "He has been assessed in the UK as suffering from bipolar disorder. And the evidence shows that he is displaying the symptoms of this disease. "We lost touch with him about six years ago when he left for Poland. We know that he was picked up from Poland, living rough on the streets, by a gang. "[They] must have offered him food and a bed, and duped him and used him as a mule. "He did not actually go out to obtain drugs, the drugs were brought to him ... He would not have had the money to get on a plane to China." Shaikh's family has said that the gang offered him a music recording contract to tempt him to fly to China. A court in China rejected Shaikh's final appeal on December 21. He would be the first European citizen to be put to death in China since 1951 if executed. "The case has been processed in accordance with the law ... The defendant's litigation rights and legitimate treatment have been fully granted," Jiang Yu, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said last week. Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, has had his request for a pardon rejected by Beijing. A vigil has been held outside the Chinese embassy in London for Shaikh. |
| Source: | Al Jazeera and agencies |
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