Synopsis A British Subject is the true account of how Daily Mirror journalist Don Mackay became the first journalist to interview Mirza Tahir Hussain during his time on death row, breaking the story to the British press. After meeting Tahir and hearing of his plight to gain freedom a close bond developed between the two, leading the reporter and his wife, Nichola McAuliffe, to become deeply involved in the case. Mirza Tahir Hussian is the British man who was finally released on 17 November 2006 after spending a total of 18 years on death row in Pakistan for the murder of a taxicab driver named Jamshed Khan in 1988, a crime which Tahir claims he committed in self-defence, as Khan pulled out a gun and tried to sexually assault him. In the ensuing struggle, the gun went off, fatally injuring Khan. In 2006 Daily Mirror journalist Don Mackay got a visa to visit Pakistan by pretending to be a cricket-mad lawyer. On arrival Don used his visa to visit Tahir in prison and on death row for the disputed murder of a taxi driver. The exclusive interview inspired Don to pursue the case publicly with Don and wife Nichola phoning everyone they knew and a few people they didn’t in the race to free Tahir before he was sentenced to death by hanging. Fringe Festival. This event takes place at Pleasance Courtyard, Over the Road 2. Box Office: 0131 556 6550
Mirza Tahir Hussain is a British subject from Leeds who spent 18 years on death row in a Rawalpindi prison for allegedly murdering a taxi driver in Pakistan.
He tells the Scottish journalist Don Mackay of the Daily Mirror, who visits him, that he acted in self defence when the cab driver demanded sex and his passport at gun point.Mackay is married to actress Nichola McAuliffe who has written the play and appears in it as herself (Mackay is played by Tom Cotcher), acting offstage in a Coward production she doesn’t think much of and praying to St Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes.
It’s an intriguing, powerful show that makes less of Tahir’s supposed innocence than the general lack of humanity in the disgusting conditions of the prison and the strong possibility that Tahir’s case was permanently back-burnered by our own government in the year of the Salman Rushdie fatwah, the salmonella outbreak and the Lockerbie air disaster.
The stalemate is broken when McAuliffe writes to Prince Charles who then intervenes with the president of Pakistan. Mackay’s Mirror campaign never takes off once his hard won exclusive is hidden away in the back half of the paper.
The play is very good at airing these frustrations, the stonewalling of bureaucracy, and the volatile relationship of McAuliffe and Mackay. Tahir is played with an exhausted but riveting spiritual intensity by Kulvinder Ghir, and his loyal brother by Shiv Grewal.
- Michael Coveney
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Mackay is married to actress Nichola McAuliffe who has written the play and appears in it as herself (Mackay is played by Tom Cotcher), acting offstage in a Coward production she doesn’t think much of and praying to St Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes.
