Akmal Shaikh

[Loose]

The last time I looked this thread had been closed and I couldn't quite work out why.

I haven't really got much more to add and can only reiterate that Loosely has totally missed the point of this thread with his ramblings. At the end of the day Akmal Shaikh was rightly convicted in a Chinese Court of law for drug trafficking, sentenced to death and finally put to death at 02:30 GMT on 29 December. I had been following the case closely, hence this thread, and I remember waking up that morning, switching on the radio next to my bed and breathing a huge sigh of relief when I heard the news, Shaikh got what was coming to him and I only wish that we in this once fine Country of ours possessed the moral clarity or strength of purpose to deal ruthlessly with drug peddlers like him as well as other enemies of our society.

I hadn't noticed this thread being closed Rhodesy, wonder what happened there. I can only assume that someone took offence to something you said and rightly or wrongly were disgusted by some of the terms you used concerning how you had celebrated another human beings death and had displayed no sympathy for a family suffering with grief. Perhaps.

 

However, just to summarise:

 

You would like to see our justice system replicate the Chinese one. You would like drug dealers to be put to death and would have no qualms with how that is achieved, in fact you would celebrate it.

 

What remains then is for you to explain what you were doing with literally a carrier bag full of boxes labelled "Viagra". An amount that any logical thinking person could not conceive as being legitimately proscribed by a doctor for personal use.

 

Good luck.

[Rhodes]

Loosely - This isn't about me though is it, it's about a convicted drug trafficker, namely Akmal Shaikh, who was found guilty as charged in a Chinese Court of law, sentenced to death and rightly exectuted. Also Viagra is not exactly Heroin is it and doesn't ruin lives and kill people, I think you really should be ashamed of yourself for seemingly standing up for Shaikh and condoning his actions, like I said earlier China's no nonsense approach to drug peddling as well as other heinous crimes is second to none and should be applauded.

[Loose]

Well Rhodesy, I wanted to know how firm your convictions were since you seemed to be so certain that the way the Chinese deal with drug traffickers was so foolproof. If you don't want to answer I think we can draw our own conclusions and while viagra isn't on the list of A, B or C Controlled Substances it is a "Proscribed" drug, ie. Not over the counter.

 

Did you know that a man was sentanced to 4 years for dealing in fake viagra here in the UK? Can you imagine how much sterner the Chinese Authorities would be in dealing with the same case?

 

What we are doing here now is ensuring that you would have the same standards you profess if you were living in China - or we had the same justice system here in the UK and it was your habit to be in possession of huge amounts of Viagra, counterfeit or otherwise.

 

And for the record, No, I'm not ashamed of having some compassion even for a man I know very little about and at the end of the day neither did you for all you seem to know about the case.

[Rhodes]

Loosely - I'm sorry but I can only continue to reiterate that Akmal Shaikh was convicted of drug trafficking in a Chinese Court of law, sentenced to death and rightly exectuted. This is, sorry was, a man who had an obsession with easy money, he was unsurprisingly a bankrupt and had a chequered financial history to say the least, he was once fined £10,000 for hounding an unsuspecting woman he had recruited as his secretary and his first wife refused point blank to join a campaign for his reprieve. Shaikh had an extremely tangled personal life always leaving mayhem and upset in his wake and had tenuous links with Britain anyway having spent most of his adult life in the US and Poland which begs the question what he was up to. Why on earth would you, an upstanding British citizen, give this criminal the time of day, it doesn't make any sense unless you have a hidden agenda.

[Loose]

Akmal Shaikh: Briton executed by China thought he was a July 7 bomber, says daughter

Akmal Shaikh, the Briton executed by China for "drug smuggling", was so deluded that he told his family he was responsible for the July 7 bombings, according to his daughter.

 

By Rebecca Lefort

Published: 7:17PM GMT 02 Jan 2010

 

 

Akmal Shaikh was buried in an unmarked grave in an icy Muslim cemetery not far from the Xishan Detention Centre in Urumqi, north-west China In an exclusive interview his eldest child, Leilla Horsnell, said that at that moment they thought his mental illness had plummeted to a new low.

 

But they learnt they were wrong in September 2007 when he was arrested in China on drug-smuggling charges, leading to a cross-continent battle for justice which ended only last week when the 53-year-old was executed by lethal injection.

 

Mr Shaikh's body lies in an unmarked grave in an icy Muslim cemetery not far from the Xishan Detention Centre in Urumqi, in the northwest of the country, where he was put to death on Tuesday.

 

Speaking at length for the first time since his execution, Mrs Horsnell told The Sunday Telegraph that she was devastated and appalled that the Chinese authorities had refused to conduct a psychological assessment of her father, despite overwhelming evidence that he suffered from severe bipolar disorder.

 

"If it made any sense it would be easier," said the 31-year-old. "But I simply can't understand why the Chinese refused to carry out the assessment.

 

"I'm still in shock. I still can't believe it because there was so much evidence he was unwell. The whole case is like watching a film or reading a book, there is nothing about it that sounds normal."

 

Growing up in north London, Mr Shaikh's three children by his first marriage, Leilla, Abdul Jabar and Imran, became accustomed to their father's erratic and irrational behaviour.

 

But it was not until July 2005 when he sent text messages falsely claiming responsibility for the London attacks - claims which prompted a police investigation - that they finally cut all contact with him, unable, as a Muslim family, to excuse his actions.

 

"As a child I remember him joking, laughing, smiling and being confident," said Mrs Horsnell, who now lives in Essex.

 

"But he wasn't mature enough to cope with a family at times. He was very childlike, he would fritter in and out of being there mentally.

 

"When I last saw him he had very strange ideas, he thought he could set up an airline and just wasn't thinking rationally. But he was clean shaven and very charming, and when I saw the pictures of him recently looking dishevelled it was a shock to see what he had become."

 

Mr Shaikh's conviction for smuggling 4kg of heroin - hidden in the suitcase of someone he hardly knew - into China turned his family's world upside down, but even before they received the unbelievable call from the Foreign Office the former cab driver had repeatedly caused them deep anxiety.

 

He was constantly in financial difficulties, was taken to an employment tribunal for sexually harassing a female employee, and eventually left his first wife - who refused to have her name connected with him during the fight to save his life - for his Polish secretary, with whom he has two young children, and moved to Poland.

 

"He wasn't perfect and it was difficult for us, but he clearly was mentally ill," said Mrs Horsnell, a GP contracts manager. "He could be very charming, and lots of people have written to me to tell me of their fond memories of him.

 

"We'll think of him as he was when he was fun and smiling. I'm so sad he didn't feel able to get help for his problems."

 

Mrs Horsnell said she and many members of her family found they were able to forgive Mr Shaikh for his actions after they realised the true extent of his mental illness - but the Chinese Government refused to show any such clemency.

 

China's Supreme People's Court insisted it had not been provided with any documentation proving Mr Shaikh had a mental disorder, and rejected bids to allow experts to examine him during his time in Chinese jails.

 

"Why didn't they just give a psychologist access to him, why were they so adamant?" is the question Mrs Horsnell keeps asking, fearing the reason is that China did not care about the outcome and simply wanted to make an example of Mr Shaikh. No other citizen of a country that is now within the EU has been executed in China since 1951, when an Italian was shot for involvement in an alleged plot to assassinate Mao Tse-Tung.

 

"I want to say to them, 'Please tell me how you can say he doesn't have a mental illness'. It is scary for anyone with mental health problems in China if they really don't believe a man who thought he was going to be a pop star and had produced a song about rabbits was mentally ill. He was duped into smuggling the drugs because he was told he'd be made a star.

 

"Even if they had said he was mentally unwell but that was tough and they were going to execute him anyway, I could understand it more."

 

Mrs Horsnell said her lack of understanding is what haunts her about her father's death and has made her determined to fight to make sure the injustice does not happen again.

 

She also fears that that she will regret for ever her decision not to visit him while he awaited his fate in a foreign country.

 

"I was worried I wouldn't recognise him as the man I knew," she explained. "I'm sad that he was on his own, but a lot of the time he was in his own world and he didn't understand what was happening.

 

"I'm not sure if not going was the right decision, and it is something I will always be thinking about."

 

The Chinese, meanwhile, appear to have no second thoughts about their decision. After British politicians, including Gordon Brown and David Cameron, condemned the execution China hit back forcibly, saying, "Nobody has the right to speak ill of China's judicial sovereignty." Officials pointed out that many Chinese citizens had suffered the death penalty for offences involving far smaller quantities of the drug, and said such punishments were necessary as a deterrent.

 

Mrs Horsnell said she still had no words to describe China's action but she praised the UK's stance and was grateful that behind the scenes the Government, including the Prime Minister, lobbied hard for clemency for more than a year. She also praised the legal charity Reprieve for launching a campaign, during which Polish friends and colleagues of Mr Shaikh came forward to offer more evidence of his mental instability.

 

Its founder, Clive Stafford Smith, said: "For nine months, since April, the Chinese would first acquiesce to our request that Akmal Shaikh to be evaluated by mental health experts, and then renege. What did they have to lose from fairness?

 

"Today he is dead, yet the People's Supreme Court has not yet deigned to provide us with its reasons for rejecting his appeal more than a week ago. We filed petitions with all the relevant authorities seeking clemency, and we have received no reasoning from anyone. Why do they feel unable to justify their decision?"

 

It is the question to which his devastated family will continue to seek an answer, so they can finally get some sense of justice for their imperfect but much-loved Akmal Shaikh.

[Big J R]

Sorry P.B., but I'm totally with Rhodesy on this one.

 

We can't be expected to interfere with the laws of another country, and I have always believed in the old maxim....

 

"When in Rome........."

[Rhodes]

Big JR - Thanks for that and I couldn't have put it better myself, <edited by admin>. The Chinese Embassy in London helpully issued a statement, following Shaikh's execution, and stated categorically that he had no previous medical record of mental illness whatsoever, his rights and interests had also been properly and decently respected and he was given a burial in a Muslim Cemetary following a funeral which took place before sundown in accordance with Muslim practice, the Chinese really didn't have to go to those lengths and could have easily let his body rot somewhere without considering his Muslim religion.

[Loose]

Sorry P.B., but I'm totally with Rhodesy on this one.

 

We can't be expected to interfere with the laws of another country, and I have always believed in the old maxim....

 

"When in Rome........."

Thats fine JR as far as it goes. However it is the job of our government to do its best on behalf of its citizens. Now I don't know about you but our friend Rhodesy seems a little shaky on dual standards and whereas you support the fact that a foreign country has the sovereign right to uphold its own values within its own judiciary system, I would just say that the country of a foreign national with a different culture has a right to make sure that it does all it can to ensure that the International Human Rights of a citizen are protected. Now thats a long debate and Rhodesy's simple rhetoric which he read on the back of a juice carton doesn't quite cut it.

 

What I do know is that its very difficult to conceive of myself having no sympathy for a man's family or compassion for a man losing his life when the only so called facts are those readily available from a media with its own agenda and the rants of Rhodesys type. Pretty thin stuff.

 

A man occupied space on this planet for 53 years, he had loved ones, he interacted with other human beings. He may have led an imperfect life but which of us hasn't?

 

Now, if Rhodesy doesn't want to explain his dual standards following his rants about how Britain should follow China's lead then as I said, you can draw your own conclusions about how serious he is.

[Rhodes]

A man occupied space on this planet for 53 years, he had loved ones, he interacted with other human beings. He may have led an imperfect life but which of us hasn't?

Loosely - There is a big difference between occupying space and wasting space and I'm afraid that Akmal Shaikh fell very much into the latter category. Why don't you just leave it alone now and stop this nonsense, Shaikh is dead, and rightly so, nothing, least of all your ramblings, can bring him back

Edited January 8, 2010 by Rhodes

[Big J R]

I would prefer to see Gary McKinnon EMPLOYED by the C.I.A., M.I.5 and M.I.6 to test and evalulate our own security computer systems.

 

If he found it so easy to hack into U.S. security systems, it seems to me he would be the ideal person to keep checks on them for us !

 

:coffee (2):

Edited January 10, 2010 by Big J R

[Rhodes]

Big JR - The trouble is that wouldn't even occur to the Home Secretary Alan Johnson or Gordon Brown for that matter, all they are interested in is being poodles to the US like Tony Blair was and getting Gary McKinnon extradited at all costs

[Big J R]

Big JR - The trouble is that wouldn't even occur to the Home Secretary Alan Johnson or Gordon Brown for that matter, all they are interested in is being poodles to the US like Tony Blair was and getting Gary McKinnon extradited at all costs

 

 

So very true !

 

[Big J R]

:coffee (2): Edited January 10, 2010 by Big J R

[Loose]

 

Loosely - There is a big difference between occupying space and wasting space and I'm afraid that Akmal Shaikh fell very much into the latter category.

And what gives you the right to judge this to be the case Rhodes? Is it your intimate knowledge of being a waste of space?

 

As for rambling - you've been over hill and down dale without yet proving that you know anything about the subject than you've been fed by reading that comic The Sun.

 

Get a grip man.

[Rhodes]

Loosely - It's common knowledge that Shaikh was a waste of space and the Chinese did a lot of people a huge favour by executing him, what about the Secretary he once employed and then made her life a misery to use just one example, I bet she jumped for joy on 29 December when she heard the joyous news