By Ben Richardson Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) — China executed a British national today for smuggling heroin, brushing off pleas from the U.K. government for clemency and protests that the father of five was suffering from a mental illness and unfit to stand trial. “I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms,” U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement the Foreign Office released after receiving confirmation from China that the sentence had been carried out. “No mental health assessment was undertaken,” he said. Shaikh’s execution is the first of a national from a European Union country in China in 50 years, according to the charity Reprieve , which campaigns for death row prisoners globally. China carried out more executions than the rest of the world put together last year, Amnesty International says. There has been no independent confirmation from China’s government. The state-run Xinhua News Agency, often the first to release information from official stories, said earlier today that the Supreme Court had confirmed the death sentence. China typically carries out executions soon after the court’s go-ahead. The execution was carried out at 10:30 a.m. local time in Urumqi, the capital of China’s westernmost Xinjiang province, Reprieve said, without saying where it got the information. Shaikh’s family carried out a vigil outside the Chinese Embassy in London seeking a reprieve, the charity said on its Web site. The execution followed repeated attempts to have Shaikh examined by a doctor to assess his mental health, Reprieve said. ‘No Evidence’ “China’s refusal to even allow a proper medical evaluation is simply disgusting,” Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith said. The British government and Reprieve had failed to provide documentary evidence that Shaikh or members of his family had a mental illness, Xinhua said. “Drug trafficking is considered a heinous crime according to world consensus,” Xinhua cited the Supreme Court verdict as saying. “Chinese law requires that everybody who commits a crime be treated equally. The use of the capital punishment creates an effective deterrent against drug trafficking.” At his last appeal hearing, Shaikh’s 50-minute testimony was “rambling and often incoherent” and “greeted with incredulity and sometimes mirth by court officials,” Reprieve said. The charity also published e-mails it said were from Shaikh and illustrated his mental instability. ‘Long History’ “Our specific concerns about the individual in this case were not taken into consideration despite repeated calls by the prime minister, ministerial colleagues and me,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in the U.K. government’s statement. “These included mental health issues, and inadequate professional interpretation during the trial.” Shaikh was arrested with 4 kilograms of heroin in September 2007, according to a statement by Reprieve. He was suffering a delusion and being manipulated by a drug gang, it said. Shaikh, from Kentish Town in London, had a “long history of strange behavior” and believed he was going to record a hit single in China, Reprieve said. The gang had promised to help him record the song , and asked him to carry the suitcase on a flight for them, according to the statement. He told authorities that the suitcase wasn’t his and he didn’t know about the drugs. Before landing in Urumqi, Shaikh had been living in Poland, where he met a man named Carlos, who told him he had contacts in the music business in China, according to Reprieve. Song Witnesses cited by Reprieve recounted a history of deteriorating mental health in Poland. Shaikh had written a song called “Come Little Rabbit” that he wanted to record, said Gareth Saunders, a U.K. musician who met Shaikh there, according to testimony on Reprieve’s Web site dated Dec. 28. Saunders said he had only just heard of Shaikh’s circumstances. “It was clear that Akmal had absolutely no musical talent, no sense of timing, and the song itself was dreadful,” Saunders wrote, adding that he was “totally delusional,” living in a shelter and seemingly homeless. Shaikh became the first European executed in China for 58 years since Antonio Riva was shot by firing squad in 1951, accused of plotting to kill Mao Zedong , Reprieve said. To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Richardson at brichardson8@bloomberg.net ; Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net .
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China Executes British Drug Smuggler, Ignoring Brown’s Appeal for Clemency
