Executed man's family return home

Dec 30 2009

Devastated relatives of a Briton executed in China are to return to the UK as relations between the two countries remain frosty.

Akmal Shaikh was killed by lethal injection on Tuesday despite pleas for clemency from his family, human rights groups and the UK Government.

His supporters said Shaikh suffered from a mental illness, thought to be bipolar disorder, and was duped into smuggling heroin into China.

Shaikh's cousins, Soohail and Nasir Shaikh, travelled to China to visit him in prison but failed in their efforts to have the execution delayed so his mental health could be assessed.

He died in the early hours of Tuesday and it is believed his body was buried later the same day according to Islamic customs and laws.

The execution sparked a diplomatic war of words between London and Beijing.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had telephoned Chinese premier Wen Jiabao to urge him to halt the execution, said he was "appalled and disappointed" at the failure to grant clemency.

Chinese officials in both capitals hit back with an insistence that Shaikh had "no previous medical record" of mental illness and a warning not to meddle in China's judicial affairs.

The row culminated last night in a "difficult conversation" between Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis and China's Ambassador Fu Ying who was summoned to explain her country's action.

Shaikh, 53, from Kentish Town, north London, was arrested in Urumqi, north west China, in September 2007 and later convicted of smuggling 4kg (8.8lb) of heroin into the country.