Rival groups of supporters and opponents of the death penalty gathered for sombre demonstrations and prayer

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Rival groups of supporters and opponents of the death penalty gathered for sombre demonstrations and prayer meetings.While he has been on death row, Echegaray has married Zenaida Javier, two years his junior. She vowed to commit suicide if her husband of one month was executed. By a majority of eight to five the judges decided that in such circumstances it was unreasonable to carry out the execution.On Sunday the authorities had barricaded the jail in the capital, Manila. The condemned man had been moved to a rubber-padded holding cell and was eating his last meal when the delay was announced. The Philippines abolished the death penalty in 1987, but restored it in 1994 because of a resurgence in crime.The reprieve was granted because the Philippines Congress is due to reconsider its stand on the death penalty. "We will follow Blair wherever he goes."Meanwhile, the SA Press Association reported that theHerstigte Nasionale Party had dismissed a statement from 10 Downing Street expressing sorrow about the many deaths in the Boer war and insisted on an unqualified apology for the suffering caused to Afrikaners during the conflict.. A CHILD RAPIST escaped death by lethal injection with three hours to spare yesterday when the Philippines supreme court postponed his execution.

Leo Echegaray, 38, would have been the first man executed in the Philippines since 1976. "We don't agree with the bombing of Iraq and are disgusted at the killing of innocent women and children," said Moaim Achmad, a Mago spokesman. Muslims against Global Oppression (Mago) will hold a mass demonstration on Thursday in Cape Town with further protests planned elsewhere. TONY BLAIR will be hounded by angry Muslims on the left and irate conservative Afrikaners on the right when he makes his first official visit to South Africa tomorrow. Muslim groups plan to pester the Prime Minister with demonstrations over British participation in air attacks on Iraq last month; Afrikaners are demanding an apology for alleged ethnic cleansing and war crimes dating from the Boer war, the centenary of which will be remembered this year. Blair is scheduled to arrive in Pretoria tomorrow. The demand covered 14 staff members - one American and 13 Britons UN officials said the matter was still being negotiated.. It said it could not guarantee their safety after the allied air raids last month.

The US had originally planned air attacks on Iraq in November, but these were halted at the last moment.It now seems possible that the US timed its attacks to support a possible uprising in southern Iraq, since many of the targets were communications and military sites in the region.The State Department said that more than 2,000 civilians from the southern marshes had been taken hostage, including women and children, against further outbreaks of violence by the Shia community.t Iraq yesterday asked the United Nations to remove British and American staff from humanitarian teams working in the country. "The repression reportedly reached a peak in November, with hundreds killed in actions directed personally by Qusay Hussein," said Mr Rubin.Qusay, Saddam's second son, runs the Special Security Organisation, a target of the air raids last month. The South, home to Iraq's Shia muslim minority, was the scene of an uprising shortly after the 1991 Gulf War, which was viciously repressed by the Iraqi security forcesAmerica has said that it would support any regime which overthrew President Saddam, and the Iraqi opposition has suggested establishing a "free zone" in the South."Over the past six weeks we have seen reports of mass arrests throughout the southern no-fly zone and in the Shia suburbs of Baghdad and hundreds of summary executions of dissidents at Amara and Radwania prison," said James Rubin, the State Department spokesman.President Saddam's family, which directs key parts of the security apparatus, ran the crackdown, the US alleged. On the other hand, it could equally be propaganda aimed at destabilising the country. The killings and arrests came in the South of the country, the US State Department said, quoting Iraqi opposition forces. If there has been recent instability, the report may explain why the US and Britain believed last month's air campaign had a chance of toppling Saddam Hussein's regime. IRAQ HAS mounted a massive internal clampdown, executing hundreds and jailing many more, the United States claimed yesterday.