Martin Bureau—AFP
Pakistani Christian on death row for blasphemy has urged court to reconsider her case.
Aasia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy, filed an appeal in the Supreme Court on Monday, her final legal recourse after being found guilty of insulting Islam’s Prophet four years ago.
The Lahore High Court confirmed the death sentence of Aasia Bibi last month, dashing hopes the conviction might be overturned or commuted to a jail term. She has been on death row since November 2010 after being convicted of insulting Islam’s Prophet during an argument with a Muslim woman over a bowl of water.
“On behalf of Aasia Bibi I have today filed an appeal in the Supreme Court,” said defense attorney Saiful Malook. He said that in the petition his client has asked the court to reconsider deficiencies in the case including allegedly manipulated evidence and a delay between the time of the incident and its investigation by police.
Malook added that the blasphemy allegation was concocted by Bibi’s enemies to target her and had no basis in fact. “We expect an early hearing of the appeal and hope that the proceedings will be over in one year,” he added.
The allegations against Bibi date back to June 2009, when she was laboring in a field and a row broke out with some Muslim women she was working with. She was asked to fetch water, but the Muslim women objected, saying that as a non-Muslim she was unfit to touch the water bowl. A few days later the women went to a local cleric and put forward the blasphemy allegations.
Bibi’s husband has also written to President Mamnoon Hussain to ask for her to be pardoned and allowed to move to France. “We are convinced that Aasia will only be saved from being hanged if the venerable President Hussain grants her a pardon. No one should be killed for drinking a glass of water,” husband Ashiq Masih wrote in an open letter dated Nov. 17 and published by The New York Times. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has said the couple are welcome in the city.
Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in Pakistan, with even unproven allegations often prompting mob violence. No one has ever been executed for blasphemy, but anyone convicted, or even just accused, of insulting Islam, risks a violent and bloody death at the hands of vigilantes.
1 comment
Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln ” The quickest way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it vigorously” – this stratagem does not seem to be working too well.
The situation is absurd, it is against decency to kill a human, a mother of young kids for words she may or may not have uttered when provoked to anger, words which she refutes.