KATY Bennett is a 16-year-old student at the Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester. As part of her work experience with Dorset human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, she wrote this essay from the perspective of Shafqat Hussain, a teenager condemned to death in Pakistan, who has been on death row for eleven years, and through the work of Reprieve was recently reprieved from hanging at the last moment...

I AM 14 years old and living in poverty in Pakistan. I long since left school, because I had to work, and therefore I’ve never learned to read or write.

Sometimes my mind drifts and I wonder how much more I would understand if I could read. As it is, so many of my questions go unanswered.

I live at home with my family, but they won’t be able to look after me for much longer. I’ll have to leave soon in search of work to support myself.

I’m scared to leave, but I can’t be a drain on my parents – I can tell that they wish it didn’t have to be this way, and so I have to be strong for them, and not show how sad I am.

It’s difficult now I’m gone. I didn’t imagine how lonely I could be in Karachi, in a city so full of people. I am terribly homesick – I miss the quiet restfulness and the voices of my family.

Looking for work has also been harder than expected.

I managed to make enough money to buy some food, but the jobs were temporary and I have nothing now. I haven’t eaten for almost two days and I’m worried that I might end up having to steal something – that or starve. I don’t want to get in trouble and I don’t want to break the law – when I see my parents again in a few months, I want to have a proper job and make them proud of me.

I don’t understand what I did wrong. Everything has been a nightmarish blur since they came to arrest me.

I’ve caught a word or two, here or there, but they’re all talking so quickly and quietly, and my head hurts, I think from where I was pushed to the ground… I’m being driven somewhere, I think – it’s bumpy, and every few seconds I’m awkwardly thrown sideways.

I can’t protect myself because my hands are tied, so my shoulder is bearing the brunt of this, and beginning to ache.

I’m suddenly grabbed roughly – one hand on each arm, and marched forward. I’m blindfolded and I can’t see where they’re taking me, but I hear a door open and then slam behind me. Another door creaks open and I’m thrown to the ground. This time, when it closes, I’m all alone.

It hurts like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I didn’t know pain could be this bad until today, but I keep thinking I’ve reached a limit and suddenly it’s worse.

I have been beaten, electrocuted and burned, to the point where I hardly recognise the feeling of inhabiting my own body. I’m constantly in and out of consciousness – every moment I black out I’m scared I might never wake up again, and as soon as I come to I wish I hadn’t.

As a result, though, time has lost all meaning – it could be night or day, weeks could have gone by since I was brought here or only hours.

The people who hurt me shout at me too. They want me to tell them something – they want me to say that I did something, and they won’t stop until I do. Did what?

I don’t remember what happened. After nine days of torture – as well as starvation, lack of sleep and maddening solitude – I couldn’t even remember my own name, or who I was.

But if I close my eyes I can still hear them shouting – and promising me that it would stop as soon as I “confessed”. I had no idea what they were asking me to do. I could half convince myself it was all a terrible dream, and as the torture progressed I gradually lost all sense of reality – I would have admitted that a deer was an elephant by the end, and probably believed it myself.

And now I am told that I confessed to murder, when I hardly remember confessing.

There was even a trial, but I lost all hope of justice when I saw the lawyer they had given me. I could barely register the conviction – sentenced to death? I’ve hardly had a life yet!

I’m on my own. I’ve been here for days. It could be longer – weeks, maybe. Where are my family? Do they know I’m here? I haven’t spoken to my parents since leaving home but I was hoping to see them after I’d found work and made a bit of money. How long until they’d get worried and come looking?

Since being sentenced to death, I’ve spent all my time either sobbing like a baby – how my friends would make fun of me – or so stone cold silent I scare myself. It doesn’t feel real, it can’t be real… it is real. I am 25 years old now. No longer a boy, but irrevocably shaped by his experiences.

They told me they were going to kill me – they even set a date. I was afraid, I shed tears and I lost sleep – but I was suddenly told that I am no longer to be killed.

This brings me little relief – of course I am glad to have my life, but what kind of life is it, when I have not seen my family in 11 years? I could die tomorrow – they will not always give warning – so I must always live in fear.

They hardly feed me and I cannot go outside or return to my home. I have not tasted good food in eleven years, and I still feel the scars of my torture.

All I want is the justice that I never got when I was 14. I should never have been arrested; I should never have been forced to confess. I should have been given a fair trial. I deserve my freedom, the same way everybody deserves freedom.

I did not lose mine, it did not disappear – it was stolen.

I want it back.