An Iranian asylum seeker who set himself on fire outside the offices of the UN refugee agency here has died, local media reported today.

Fifty-year-old Gulam Hassan Anwari died Tuesday night at Kuala Lumpur Hospital nine hours after torching himself to protest a refusal to grant him asylum and failed business dealings, the Star said.

Anwari had thrown a hand-written four-page letter at reporters gathered outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices before setting himself ablaze, the paper said.

Anwari, who claimed he was from Baluchistan on the Iran-Pakistan border, said in his letter that he came to Malaysia on a Pakistani passport in 2001 and wanted to end his life because he had been ill-treated and cheated in several business deals here.

Planned immolation

He had already doused himself in petrol before arriving at the UNHCR offices and simply flicked a cigarette lighter to set himself on fire.

A taxi driver reacted quickly and used a fire extinguisher from his car to put out the blaze.

"We all rushed outside to help him, but his whole body was burned up to his hair," UNHCR official Gigi Principe told AFP.

Anwari, who had alerted some local journalists to his planned immolation, first applied for asylum in November 2001 but was rejected. An appeal in 2002 was also turned down on the basis that "his case was very weak", Principe said.

Since then he had been living illegally in Malaysia, she said. - AFP