Briton on death row released from Pakistan prison

Confirming Tahir Hussain's release, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said he is a free man and can go anywhere he wants to.

A Briton condemned to death for murder in Pakistan was released from jail on Friday, a day after President Pervez Musharraf granted him clemency.

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"Mirza Tahir Hussain has been released from jail and is free to go anywhere he wants to," Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said confirming Hussain's release.

Sherpao declined to say if Hussain had already left the country but it was believed he took a British Airways flight that left Islamabad for Britain Friday morning.

Hussain, 36, and of Pakistani origin, was just 18 years when he was sentenced to death in 1988 on the charge of murdering a taxi driver. He pleaded innocent to the charge, claiming the taxi driver tried to sodomise him at gunpoint and was killed in a struggle.

President Musharraf, pressed by the British government and rights groups, had commuted his death sentence to a life term on Thursday.