Akmal Shaikh (5 April 1956 – 29 December 2009) was a Pakistani-born British businessman who was convicted and executed in China for illegally trafficking approximately 4kg of heroin. 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 had 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 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.
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. Xue Jinzhan, 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 terminated 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.
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.
Drug trafficking, trials and execution 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 "Come Little Rabbit" 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 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.
First trial – November 2007 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 . 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.
Second trial – May 2009 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."Richardson, Ben (29 December 2009), "China Executes Briton Over Heroin, Ignores Mental Health Claim" BusinessWeek, Bloomberg 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.
The Supreme People's Court ruled that documents provided by the British Embassy in Beijing and Reprieve in support of the request for a psychiatric assessment did not prove that Shaikh had a mental disorder; nor was there a history of mental disease in his family. His lawyer, Cao, confirmed that the documents he received from Reprieve contained "medical information about bipolar disorder, and a list of symptoms and case studies" not specific to Shaikh. According to Professor Jerome A. Cohen, professor emeritus at New York University School of Law, Shaikh's November trial lasted half an hour; he also said that the trial court initially agreed to allow a psychiatric evaluation of Shaikh, but subsequently refused it. Xinhua stated that the court's decision to refuse a mental assessment was based on PRC laws requiring defendants to first provide past medical records showing evidence of a mental disorder before such evaluations could be undertaken. Xinhua also reported the Supreme People's Court's view that medical records provided by the British Embassy contained no documentary evidence to support claims of Shaikh's condition. Although the Chinese authorities state he was provided with interpretation during his trials, The Guardian alleges there was none; and the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, too intimated that interpretation may have been inadequate.
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.
Execution – December 2009