|
Akmal Shaikh (5 April 1956 – 29 December 2009) was a Pakistani-British businessman who was convicted and executed in China for drug trafficking. The trial and execution attracted significant media attention in the UK. Shaikh was born in Pakistan and moved to the United Kingdom as a child. After a couple of failed businesses, Shaikh moved to Poland with his second wife in 2005 with the dream of starting an airline, and later of becoming a pop star. He travelled from Poland to China and was arrested by Chinese customs officers at Ürümqi Diwopu International Airport on 12 September 2007 with of heroin hidden in a compartment in his baggage. Shaikh's defence team pleaded ignorance of the existence of the drugs, although his lawyers said that the evidence against Shaikh was "overwhelming".〔 Reprieve, an anti-death penalty organisation, argued that Shaikh suffered from mental illness which was exploited by criminals who tricked him into transporting the heroin on the promise of a recording contract.〔 Shaikh, who had never been assessed by mental health experts, denied he was mentally ill. He had requested a psychiatric evaluation to prove he was sane, but the requests were refused by Chinese authorities on the grounds that PRC laws required defendants to first provide past medical records showing evidence of a mental disorder before such evaluations could be undertaken.〔 Appeals for clemency were made by his family and by British government officials. After two appeals, the Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence he was given at his first trial in October 2008, and Shaikh was executed by lethal injection in Ürümqi on 29 December 2009.〔 It was reported that Shaikh was the first European national to be executed in China since Antonio Riva in 1951.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=China Executes British National, Prompting Condemnation )〕 Lau Fat-wai, a Portuguese citizen, also faced drug trafficking charges back in 2006, before Akmal Shaikh, but Mr. Lau's death sentence was only carried out early in 2013.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Lau Fat-wai já foi executado )〕 Britain made 27 official representations to the Chinese government; the Chinese ambassador to London was summoned twice to meet British Foreign Office ministers, once after the execution.〔Coonan, Clifford; Morris, Nigel (30 December 2009), (Insults fly as UK hits out at China execution ), The Independent〕〔 Senior British politicians strongly condemned the execution, and were disappointed that clemency was not granted,〔 while human rights groups and some Western legal experts in Chinese law criticised the lack of due process; United Nations Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston, said the refusal to assess Shaikh's mental health was a violation of international law.〔 The Chinese embassy in Britain said Shaikh had no "previous medical record" of mental illness and that his "rights and interests were properly respected and guaranteed". It said the Chinese stance underlined the "strong resentment" felt by its public to drug traffickers, in part based on "the bitter memory of history" – a reference to the First and Second Opium Wars.〔 A professor of criminal law at the East China University of Political Science and Law said the administration of the death penalty related to a country's history, culture and other conditions: "It's human nature to plead for a criminal who is from the same country or the same family, but judicial independence should be fully respected and everyone should be equal before the law."〔 ==Biography== Shaikh, a Muslim, was a Pakistani migrant to the United Kingdom with his parents during his childhood.〔 His first wife had converted from Hinduism to Islam when they married; they had two sons and a daughter. In the 1980s, Shaikh was an estate agent in the United States. They moved back to London when the business stumbled. He then started a mini-cab business in Kentish Town called 'Teksi' which prospered for a time; even so, he fell into bankruptcy for more than two years during the 1990s. In 2003, Shaikh sexually harassed and unfairly dismissed a 24-year-old female employee; he also failed to pay more than half her wages. In 2004, an Employment Tribunal awarded her £10,255.97 damages and unpaid wages, which he subsequently never paid.〔 Shaikh and his son, Abdul-Jabbar, both failed to attend the tribunal hearings for the harassment case and sold the business to another minicab firm.〔 Shaikh's first marriage ended in divorce in 2004.〔 He married his Polish secretary – who was then pregnant with his child〔 – and moved to Poland permanently in 2005,〔 reportedly with ambitions to start an airline. He had been going to Lublin frequently since autumn 2004.〔 Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, Shaikh sent a text message to two people in London saying: "Now everybody will understand who Muslims are and what ''jihad'' is," and was consequently investigated as a terror suspect for five months by British intelligence and Poland's Internal Security Agency. In December 2005, the MI5 investigation was discontinued due to insufficient evidence. His Polish wife is reported in the ''Daily Mail'' as saying that he began to act in a 'really silly and crazy way' when he finally settled in Poland; although they had a second child, a daughter, the marriage broke down and he became homeless.〔 In 2006, by which time his former wife had remarried and had another baby with her new husband,〔 Shaikh's ex-wife reported him to Polish police for using threatening behaviour against her and her children; she later withdrew her statement, and the case never went to court.〔 In 2006 he was sentenced by a Polish court to one year in jail (suspended for four years) for driving under the influence of alcohol, and prohibited from driving for three years. He was wanted in 2007 by a Lublin court for not paying alimonies. In 2007, he joined in a month-long demonstration for nurses outside the Warsaw office of the Prime Minister of Poland,〔 and met British musician Gareth Saunders, according to whom Shaikh was destitute, living off handouts and ate at a soup kitchen.〔 Chinese press reports that Saunders was told by Shaikh that he had started a business in Poland, before they met, but which he was forced to abandon due to a conspiracy against him.〔 Shaikh wrote a song, "Come Little Rabbit", which Saunders said Shaikh pestered him and fellow Briton Paul Newberry into recording. Reprieve, an organisation working against the death penalty, campaigned for his release following his arrest in China. It cites Saunders and Newberry saying that Shaikh had no musical talent and appeared to entertain delusional ideas about stardom. Newberry reportedly said: "I can't imagine anyone singing worse than he did on that recording and we told him so, but he was on such a high, convinced that he would have a huge hit ... We told him that he was crazy, that it was the worst thing we had ever heard, but he just laughed in our face and repeated that it would be huge." A recording of this 'out of tune' song, whose lyrics include a refrain 'Only one world, only one people, only one God', was released by Reprieve to raise awareness for their campaign to save him. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Akmal Shaikh」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|