Another triumph for Pakistan's infamous blasphemy laws:
A court in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi has sentenced a 70-year-old British man to death after convicting him of blasphemy.
Muhammad Asghar was arrested in 2010 after writing letters to various people claiming to be a prophet, reports say.
His lawyers argued for leniency, saying he has a history of mental illness, but this was rejected by a medical panel.
Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws carry a potential death sentence for anyone deemed to have insulted Islam....
Muhammad Asghar is a British Pakistani from Edinburgh who came back to Pakistan to look after the family's property here. He has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic by the Royal Victoria Hospital in Edinburgh and is also partially paralysed from a stroke.
The blasphemy complaint against Asghar was filed by a tenant in his building, after he was given an eviction notice. Sources say there is pressure on the court from religious extremists who have been seen in mobs outside the courthouse.
He tried to take his own life once in jail, where has been held since 2010. The authorities have refused to put him on suicide watch, his lawyer says. There is also fear that religious extremists might harm him.
That the accusation comes from someone with a particular reason to hold a grudge is only too typical of the way that Pakistan's blasphemy law works in practice - as is the threat from mobs fired up by religious preachers. This man is unlikely to be actually executed - no one has as yet been put to death under the blasphemy law - but killing by the mob or by a lone extremist is all too common. Those freed by a higher court invariably find themselves forced to leave the country.
Another case of an elderly British man charged with blasphemy in Pakistan - this time a member of the "heretical" Ahmadiyya community - is currently the subject of a campaign for his release by a Glasgow-based human rights organisation. After reading a passage from the Koran the man was arrested for "'posing as a Muslim".
A nice title. If countries could be sectioned, Pakistan would be a prime candidate.
Posted by: Bob-B | January 24, 2014 at 05:43 PM