Cleric put price on Aasia’s head

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PESHAWAR: A hardline cleric on Friday offered a reward of 6,000 dollars to anyone who killed Aasia Bibi, a Christian mother sentenced to death for insulting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).
Maulana Yousuf Qureshi, the cleric, issued the call at a rally against moves to pardon the woman. Aasia was sentenced on November 8 to death by hanging, under blasphemy laws that human rights activists say encourage extremism.
The government attempted to pardon her after an international outcry over the case, but the LHC on Monday prevented it from granting her a swift pardon. “We demand that the government should hang her to death under the law. If it does not do so, we will offer a reward of Rs 500,000 to anyone who kills her,” Qureshi said.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people including mujahedin (warriors) and the Taliban who are ready to sacrifice their lives for the honour of Prophet Mohammed. Anyone of them could finish her,” Qureshi said.
The cleric has offered rewards for killings in the past – including an offer in 2006 of one million dollars and a car for the deaths of artists whose controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed appeared in Danish newspapers.