Akmal Shaikh

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Akmal Shaikh Biography

An editorial in The Independent noted that some other Asian countries impose the death penalty for drug-smuggling, and commented that the execution “was less the arrogance of a rising power than evidence that China is still feeling its way in the wider world”. George Walden wrote in The Times that he felt if the British government had been more discreet Shaikh might have been reprieved, and that “if we wish to influence China on capital punishment, a little historical humility may be in order” British commentators critical of the UK government’s response were Josephine McDermott of The Daily Telegraph who compared the government’s “sabre-rattling” approach to the British attitude during the First Opium War in 1839; Michael White of The Guardian, who felt that China would not be interested in “lectures from Europeans on the morality of the drugs trade”, and Leo McKinstry of the Daily Mail, who said the international clamour to denounce China was “hypocritical and insensitive”. Tony Parsons of the Daily Mirror supported China’s strong stance against drug peddling, and said the British government’s reaction was “shrill beyond belief”. Anna Smith of The News of the World commented on the irony that a drug smuggler was executed by a drug injection, and felt that the public didn’t really care “about the human rights of a drug smuggler”.

Akmal Shaikh (5 April 1956 – 29 December 2009) was a Pakistani-British businessman who was convicted and executed in China for illegally trafficking approximately 4 kg of heroin. The trial and execution attracted significant media attention in the UK.

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.

Reprieve and his family all cite examples of Shaikh’s “erratic behaviour” and “questionable decisions” at least since 2001. Reprieve interviewed people who had dealings with him to support their claims that he may have had bipolar disorder. Stephen Fry was one celebrity who joined the campaign for clemency. Reprieve also released hundreds of emails that Shaikh had sent in 2007 to embassy staff in Warsaw and to a group of 74 individuals and organisations including Tony Blair. Campaigners argued that Shaikh’s delusions of pop stardom were symptomatic of his condition, and may have made him especially susceptible to confidence tricks. Akmal’s former solicitor described his client as “charming and charismatic”. The lawyer said that “By the time he went over to Poland you could not even sit down and have a conversation with him.” Nevertheless, Shaikh had never been assessed by a psychiatrist in Britain or elsewhere.

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.

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 alimony.

Reprieve said Shaikh met a man in Poland named “Carlos” sometime in 2007 who he believed had contacts in the music industry and could help make him famous; Shaikh travelled to Kyrgyzstan, where a man named “Okole” promised Shaikh an opportunity to perform at a “huge nightclub” in China he purportedly owned. “Okole” and Shaikh travelled together to China, stopping in Tajikistan, where they stayed in a five-star hotel. On 12 September 2007, Shaikh flew from Dushanbe in Tajikistan, to Ürümqi in north-west China. Shaikh claimed he was told he would have to travel alone to China as the flight was full; “Okole” allegedly gave him a suitcase to carry, and promised he would take the next flight. Shaikh was arrested on his arrival at Ürümqi Airport the same day, when a baggage search revealed he was carrying 4 kilograms (9 lb) of heroin of 84.2% purity; Alerted by Shaikh’s nervous and circumspect behaviour, customs officers searched and found the drugs hidden in a compartment of his case, which was “practically empty” but for a few clothes; he only had US$100 and 100 Chinese yuan on his person. Reprieve said that Shaikh claimed the suitcase was not his; and he cooperated with the Chinese authorities in an attempt to catch “Okole”, who was supposed to arrive on the next plane, but who never turned up. According to the British media, the British Government was informed of the arrest almost a year later.

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. 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.

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 4 kilograms (8.818 lb) 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.

Chen Dong, Director of the Ürümqi Legal Aid Center, was appointed to represent Shaikh, who was tried in November 2007. Defence asserted to the court that Shaikh knew nothing of the drugs, and that he did not knowingly smuggle the narcotics. Shaikh was found guilty. On 29 October 2008, after two failed appeals, he was sentenced to death by the Intermediate People’s Court of Ürümqi according to the section of the Chinese criminal code which provides the death penalty for smuggling heroin in quantities of more than 50 grams (2 oz). The Supreme People’s Court validated the sentence as being in accordance with Articles 48 and 347 of China’s Criminal Law. Prospect says the judgement was made public in October 2008.

Shaikh was executed by lethal injection at 10:30 CST (02:30 GMT) on 29 December 2009 at the Xishan Detention Centre in Ürümqi. Family members and British consular officials were refused access to Shaikh during the final hours by the Chinese authorities, and were not allowed to witness the execution. According to Reprieve, Shaikh was the first national of an EU member state to be executed in China in over 50 years. Officials say he was given a Muslim burial – his body intact – according to his family’s wishes, at the Guslay Muslim Cemetery; his family was not allowed to attend.

A final appeal to the Supreme People’s Court for an independent assessment of his mental condition failed on 21 December 2009, and his execution date was set for 29 December. Shaikh was not told of his impending execution throughout this time “for humanitarian reasons”. Shaikh was visited by two cousins and British consular officials in the hospital where he had been treated for a heart condition since August 2009, and it was only then that he was informed that he would die in 24 hours.

His case was heard in the second instance on 26 May 2009. At his second trial, Reprieve said Shaikh defended himself with a “rambling and often incoherent” speech lasting 50 minutes and which was “greeted with incredulity and sometimes mirth by court officials.” According to the Sanlian Living Weekly article, one of the two lawyers representing Shaikh during his second trial, Mr. Cao Hong, said that the key defence argument was Shaikh’s ignorance of the drug he was transporting. Cao said the official documents, baggage examination reports from the record of his arrest, as well as pictures and video footage taken during the baggage check was “overwhelmingly against Shaikh”; he did not play in court some of the video footage recorded because it was too incriminating. Cao advised Shaikh to undergo a mental evaluation, which he initially refused, arguing that he was not mentally ill. Upon his lawyer’s insistence, he made a statement requesting an evaluation to prove that he was mentally sound, but which also said that neither he nor his family had any history of mental illnesses.

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 person with citizenship of a European country to be executed in China since Antonio Riva in 1951. 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.

^[a] “Come Little Rabbit” – video of the song which Reprieve says was recorded by Akmal Shaikh (on reprieve.org).

Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Jiang Yu said, “Nobody has the right to speak ill of China’s judicial sovereignty. We express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British Government’s unreasonable criticism of the case. We urge the British to correct their mistake in order to avoid harming China–UK relations.” The Chinese Embassy in London said “The legal structures of China and UK may be different, but it should not stand in the way of enhancing our bilateral relations on the basis of mutual respect.” Further, the Embassy cited “the bitter memory” of the Opium trade of the 19th century as a reason for the “strong resentment” felt by the Chinese public to drug traffickers and foreign (especially British) interference. A biannual summit session between China and the UK on human rights scheduled for early January was “postponed” by China in what The Daily Telegraph said was “widely thought to be a rebuke to the UK for its public criticism of China over the execution of Akmal Shaikh”.

Following the execution, there was a range of views in the British press, some agreed with the political leaders Gordon Brown, David Miliband and David Cameron, who expressed concerns that a mental health assessment was not done, and that clemency requests had not been granted; others were critical of the UK government’s reaction; and some were fairly neutral. Among the journalists who supported the UK government’s stance were Dominic Ziegler, author of The Economist’s Banyan column on Asian affairs, who felt that the issue raised questions about effective use of protections for defendants during judicial process; and Daniel Korski, who wrote in The Spectator that he felt that China was “a revanchist power” seeking the status and rights of the Western world, though not the responsibilities – Prospect magazine held a similar opinion that the Chinese authorities wished to “stand up to its old oppressors” and show the Chinese people that they were “being led in the right direction.”

Reprieve, the group which mounted his campaign, said they had passed on new evidence and testimonials from six people who knew Akmal in Poland that they had received in the final 24 hours which the Chinese government had not acknowledged receiving at the time of the execution. Sally Rowan, their legal director, said that any talk of ‘special treatment’ was “ridiculous”– as Chinese law has provisions to protect those with mental illness, but they chose not to invoke them. Rowan condemned the execution of an incompetent man as “barbaric”. Other mental health charities echoed the sentiments.

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. 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.”

Some public organisations and individual experts media were critical of the judicial process. The United Nations Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston, a human rights spokesman, felt that the brevity of the initial conviction might not have allowed due process, and that not assessing Shaikh’s mental health was “in violation not only of Chinese law but also international law.” The European Union condemned the execution and regretted that its calls for the sentence to be commuted had not been heeded. Amnesty International felt the execution highlighted the injustice of the death penalty, particularly in China, and called on all countries to press the Chinese government to improve the legal proceedings for defendants, especially those facing the death penalty. Jerome Cohen, an expert in Chinese law, commented in the US-Asia Law Institute that the main legal issue was the refusal of a psychiatric examination, and that China may review its judicial process in this regard both in light of international criticism, and internal pressure as the country “shares the world’s abhorrence of punishing mentally irresponsible people” and after the execution of Yang Jia, who was also refused a psychiatric examination, the public sympathy prompted “some Chinese experts to seek necessary law reforms”.

In an editorial published by China Daily, Han Dongping, Professor of History and Political Science at Warren Wilson College, hailed the execution, saying that the decision “upheld the dignity of Chinese law.” He suggested that to act otherwise as a result of international pressure would be a return to the extraterritorial privileges that had been granted to many foreign nationals in China in the latter half of the 19th and first half of the 20th century pursuant to the “unequal treaties”. Han said that a nation bending its laws under outside pressure “invites endless troubles in the future”, leading to a lack of respect for the laws of that country, and dismissed the criticism of China’s human rights record by Western governments as “an excuse to intervene in China’s internal affairs”.

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