The Intelligence Estimate

I love dumb headlines. Crave them. Seek them like Paris Hilton seeks attention. So imagine my joy when I stumbled up on this: "Death Row Man Glad to be Home." Really? Glad to be home? You don't miss the friendly confines of an Pakistani prison? (In a related note, do all of their prisoners convert to Christianity the way ours convert to Islam?)

Unfortunately the BBC story isn't very illustrative. So I looked up the same story on CNN. Here's the skinny as I understand it. The accused, Mirza Tahir Hussain, travelled to Pakistan to visit relatives. On the day he arrived he was picked up by a cab. (In Arab countries are all the cab drivers guys with unpronounceably foreign names like Jim and Huey?) The cab driver attempted to sexually assault Mr. Hussain and in the ensuing struggle the cab driver kinda got sorta a little bit dead.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I say let he among us who has not thought of killing a cab driver cast the first stone. (I'm no scholar of Islamic law, but if Sunday school has taught me nothing (and I'm almost certain it hasn't) it's that stoning people is the most common way of settling disputes in the middle east. That and preemptive military strikes. ) By killing his assailant Mr. Hussain was living the dream of every conventioneer who's ever paid $50 to be driven across the street only to find out that the Chili's has been closed down for the minor health code violation of finding a finger in the deep frier. (The number two way of settling disputes in the Middle East.)

When the altercation was over Hussain climbed into the front of the cab and drove himself and the dead cabbie to the police station. Just to get the full effect he drove at ludicrous speeds and took the most circuitous route imaginable. When he arrived at the police station he was so furious with the driver's service that he only tipped himself 4%.

He was promptly arrested. The Pakistani police must have been so thrilled that the means, motive and opportunity walked right into the station and left a car full of evidence waiting for them out in the parking lot. This saved them all the time they would have wasted doing all that messy police work themselves.

Hussain was sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison. And then, in a bizarre loophole of Pakistani law, he was set free with time served. It seems that Hussain had, at that point, already been in jail for over 14 years and the Pakistani law defines a life sentence as 14 years. It's never fully explained why life is only 14 years, but I suspect it has something to do with living between the nuclear armed Indians and the Taliban.

Upon his landing back in Britain, Hussain said, "My thoughts remain with all the prisoners I have left behind." Apparently he'd made a lot of "friends" on the inside. And that, in the end, is the bitter irony. He went to jail because he was trying to avoid being sodomized. But perhaps that is REALLY the way the Islamic punishment is meted out: one shower at a time.

Labels: BBC News, Cab Driver, CNN, Mirza Tahir Hussain, Pakistan