APPEALS TO CHINA INTENSIFY IN EFFORT TO SPARE BRITON

LONDON -- Five days before a British man is scheduled to be executed
in China for heroin smuggling, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has joined
members of the man's family and human rights organizations in renewing
appeals for clemency.

They say Chinese courts failed to give adequate weight to the man's
history of mental disturbance or to his claim that he was duped into
carrying the heroin by a drug gang.

But Chinese officials have rejected the appeals, saying that the
execution of the Briton, Akmal Shaikh, 53, will go ahead on Tuesday.

According to Western human rights groups, the last European to have
been executed in China was an Italian, Antonio Riva, who was shot by a
firing squad in 1951, along with a Japanese man, Ruichi Yamaguchi,
after being convicted of involvement in what China alleged was an
American plot to assassinate Mao Zedong and other high-ranking
Communist officials.

The relatively rare use of the death penalty against non-Chinese
citizens contrasts with China's frequent use of capital punishment
against its own citizens, which has drawn severe criticism from human
rights advocates within China and abroad for many years. Amnesty
International estimated that at least 1,700 court-ordered executions
were carried out in 2008, more than in any other country. Other human
rights groups have put the figure much higher, in some cases as high
as several thousand.

The case of Mr. Shaikh, a former manager of a London minicab company
who was born in Pakistan and moved to Britain at age 11, has prompted
unusually broad protests.

Family members and the British chapter of the human rights group
Reprieve, which runs a worldwide campaign against the death penalty,
have said that Mr. Shaikh has a long history of unstable behavior
linked to bipolar disorder, which they say has manifested itself in
recurrent episodes in which he has become a fantasist. They have said
that his journey to China in August 2007 resulted from his belief that
he could start a career as a pop star, although he had no previous
experience as a singer.

According to his older brother, Akbar Shaikh, the younger Mr. Shaikh
was a devoted family man who "seemed to go off the rails" after his
first marriage failed, and he moved to Poland, saying he planned to
set up an airline.

Later, family members have said, his ambitions shifted to a singing
career. The family has released a recording of a song Mr. Shaikh wrote
while he was in Poland that they say demonstrates that he was
delusional. The song, promoting global harmony, includes the lines
"Come, little rabbit, come and play/Come, little rabbit, let us sing."

According to the family, two men Mr. Shaikh met in Poland suggested
that he travel to the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan and from
there to Urumqi in western China, where they said there was a
nightclub where he could promote his singing career. But when Mr.
Shaikh and his new companions went to the airport in Dushanbe, the
capital of Tajikistan, the men told him that there was only one seat
available on the flight to Urumqi, and that Mr. Shaikh should take it
and check one of his companions' suitcases on the flight.

It was in this suitcase, Reprieve has said, that customs officials at
Urumqi found nearly nine pounds of heroin. Chinese law imposes the
death penalty for anyone found smuggling more than 50 grams of heroin,
less than two ounces.

In October 2008, the court that sentenced Mr. Shaikh to death met for
less than half an hour. Efforts by Reprieve and lawyers for the Shaikh
family to have the court order a full psychiatric assessment were
rejected, and a British forensic psychiatrist who traveled to Urumqi
on Reprieve's behalf was denied access to Mr. Shaikh and to the trial.

The death sentence was confirmed this week by the Supreme People's
Court, prompting new appeals to Chinese leaders by Prime Minister
Brown and the British foreign minister, David Miliband. Officials at
10 Downing Street said a letter by Mr. Brown focused on the
possibility that Mr. Shaikh had been tricked into carrying the drugs.
The Foreign Office said it was "alarmed and deeply concerned" by
aspects of the case, including the court's failure to order a
psychiatric examination.

Hopes that Mr. Shaikh might win a reprieve dimmed when a Chinese
Foreign Ministry official said at a news conference in Beijing on
Tuesday that "the relevant rights and interests of the defendant were
fully respected and guaranteed" by China's judicial authorities, and
that "drug smuggling is a grave crime in international practice."

Mr. Shaikh's children responded with a new appeal. "Our father has
been seriously ill for much of his life, and we would be devastated to
lose him in these circumstances," they said. "We respectfully hope
that, particularly during the holiday season, the Chinese people will
show their great capacity for compassion and humanity and grant him a
reprieve."