Pakistan Blasphemy Case: Asia Bibi Freed From Jail

Will this young Christian woman be able to escape

the Islamic Insanity that is Pakistan?

A Pakistani Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy after spending eight years on death row has been freed from prison, her lawyer says.

Some reports say Asia Bibi has boarded a plane but its destination was not known.

The Supreme Court ruling sparked protests from Islamists and the government had said it would bar her from leaving Pakistan.

Her husband had said they were in danger and pleaded for asylum.

Asia Bibi, a mother-of-five, was released from prison in the city of Multan, her lawyer Saif Mulook said.

Also known as Asia Noreen, she was convicted in 2010 of insulting the Prophet Muhammad during a row with neighbours.

Several countries have offered her asylum.

The Pakistani government has said it will start legal proceedings to prevent her going abroad after agreeing the measure to end the violent protests.

Many of the protesters were hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws and called for Asia Bibi to be hanged.

One Islamist leader said all three Supreme Court judges also "deserved to be killed".

Yes, because you would not want Pakistan to enter the 2nd millennium, let alone the 3rd. I have hopes for the new Prime Minister, but he has an extraordinary problem in dealing with Islamic Insanity.

A spokesman for the hardline Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLP) party said Asia Bibi's release was in breach of their deal with the government.

"The rulers have showed their dishonesty," TLP spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters.

The deal also saw officials agree not to block a petition for the Supreme Court to evaluate Asia Bibi's acquittal in the light of Islamic Sharia law.

What was Asia Bibi accused of?

The trial stems from an argument Asia Bibi had with a group of women in June 2009.

They were harvesting fruit when a row broke out about a bucket of water. The women said that because she had used a cup, they could no longer touch it, as her faith had made it unclean.

Prosecutors alleged that in the row which followed, the women said Asia Bibi should convert to Islam and that she made offensive comments about the Prophet Muhammad in response.

She was later beaten up at her home, during which her accusers say she confessed to blasphemy. She was arrested after a police investigation.

Acquitting her, the Supreme Court said that the case was based on unreliable evidence and her confession was delivered in front of a crowd "threatening to kill her".

Why is this case so divisive?

Islam is Pakistan's national religion and underpins its legal system. Public support for the strict blasphemy laws is strong.

Hard-line politicians have often backed severe punishments, partly as a way of shoring up their support base.

But critics say the laws have often been used to exact revenge after personal disputes, and that convictions are based on thin evidence.

How many do not ever make it to trial as mass hysteria sometimes results in the immediate murder of the accused, often in the most horrific manner?

The vast majority of those convicted are Muslims or members of the Ahmadi community, but since the 1990s scores of Christians have been convicted. They make up just 1.6% of the population.

The Christian community has been targeted by numerous attacks in recent years, leaving many feeling vulnerable to a climate of intolerance.

Since 1990, at least 65 people have reportedly been killed in Pakistan over claims of blasphemy.

Please pray for Asia and her family, that they will indeed escape Pakistan and find refuge in a safe country, if one exists. 

Mass ‘Religious’ Suicide, or Murder? 11 Bodies Found in India’s Capital

A policeman writes notes in the house where the bodies of eleven members of a family were found dead © Stringer / Reuters

An Indian family of 11 has been found dead in New Delhi, with 10 members blindfolded and hanging from a ceiling. Initial reports indicate a twisted spiritual mass suicide attempt, but police aren’t discounting other possibilities.

The bodies of seven women and four men were discovered in the Burari suburb of the Indian capital on Sunday by their neighbor, who called the police in shock over what he has witnessed.

When authorities arrived at the scene, they discovered 10 blindfolded bodies, with cotton stuffed in their ears, hanging from an iron grille in the home’s courtyard, suspended by cables and 'chunnis' (scarves with religious motifs), local media report. The body of an 11th person, reportedly in her seventies, was found strangled and lying on the floor of the house.

The victims, which police say belonged to a single family, are believed to have committed a mass religious suicide, as authorities failed to discover any forced entry, gunshot wounds, or anything that would clearly indicate a homicide.

Instead, according to reports, law enforcement discovered handwritten notes, which indicated that the family had meticulously prepared for the “mass salvation” and had carefully examined ways of hanging themselves. No suicide notes were found at the scene. Only a dog inside the house survived the mass murder.

Based on the evidence, the victims were in “observance of some definite spiritual or mystical practices,” police said in a statement, according to AP. “Coincidentally, these notes have strong similarity with the manner in which the mouths, eyes, etc. of the deceased were tied and taped,” the statement added.

While police await the autopsy reports on the victims, including two 15-year-old boys, authorities have not discounted homicide as a possible cause of death. Treating the incident as a murder case, law enforcement teams are now analyzing call records from the victims' mobiles for possible clues and are interviewing witnesses. “It is still too early (to know what happened). It is an ongoing investigation and we haven't ruled out anything,” a police source told AFP.

According to one version of the events, shared with India Today by an anonymous police source, the mass suicide unfolded after family members were served sedatives with their dinner. Then at least one of the family allegedly proceeded to blindfold the rest of the unconscious victims before hanging them.

Pakistan has Hung 22 Terrorists Since Attack on School Killed 150

KARACHI
Pakistan hanged two sectarian militants on Tuesday for the murder of a Muslim doctor in Karachi, officials said, the latest executions since the government ended a moratorium on the death penalty.

Karachi

Attaullah, alias Qasim, and Mohammad Azam were convicted of killing doctor Ali Raza in 2001 at the busy Soldier Bazaar area of Pakistan’s largest city, which is racked by rising sectarian violence.

A total of 22 people have now been executed since the government brought back hangings in terror cases amid public outrage over a Taliban massacre at a school that left 150 people dead.

“They were hanged at 6:30 this morning and their bodies have been handed to their relatives,” a prison official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The convicts were both members of the banned Sunni militant outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), he added.

Unknown attackers detonated a low-powered bomb near two schools in Karachi on Tuesday and left a note at the scene warning of more violence if the hanging of militants did not stop.

The latest sectarian outrage was on Friday, when a suicide bomber killed 61 people at a mosque in the southern Pakistani district of Shikarpur.

It was the deadliest attack targeting Shiites in Pakistan since February 2013, when 89 were killed in a market bombing in the southwestern city of Quetta.

The country has stepped up its fight against militants since the Taliban school massacre in the northwestern city of Peshawar in December.

Heavily armed gunmen went from room to room at the army-run school gunning down 150 people, most of them children, in an attack that horrified the world.

In the aftermath the government ended a six-year moratorium on executions, restoring them for terror-related cases, and pledged to crack down on all militant groups.

The roads outside Karachi Central Prison were closed to traffic overnight as a security measure before the hangings.

Karachi traffic

Both the murderers were arrested in 2004 and tried in an Anti-Terrorism Court, which handed down the death sentence.

The United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on Pakistan to re-impose its moratorium on the death penalty.

Rights campaigners say Pakistan overuses its anti-terror laws and courts to prosecute ordinary crimes.

There are also concerns that death row convicts from cases not related to terrorism could be executed.