SC stays blasphemy convict Aasia Bibi’s execution

A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court Lahore Registry on Wednesday stayed the execution of a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, and admitted for hearing a petition filed by the death-row prisoner who was convicted on blasphemy charges.

The judges also ordered for all records pertaining to the case to be presented before it.

In her petition filed by Advocate Saiful Malook, the woman has claimed that she had not made any blasphemous remarks, and rather residents of her neighbourhood had leveled the blasphemy allegations against her based on a personal feud. She asked the court to strike down her death sentence.

Mother of two and stepmother to three children, Aasia Bibi has been on death row since November 2010 after being convicted of committing blasphemy during an argument with a Muslim woman over a bowl of water in Nankana Sahib district in 2009.

After her lawyers’ appeal in Lahore’s High Court was unsuccessful in October 2014, this is now the last chance for them to appeal that her conviction should never have been allowed, due to inadmissible evidence.

While her previous appeal at the High Court in Lahore was rejected, the judges who turned it down conceded that they had based their ruling on a technicality, which they recommended be eliminated in future to make it more difficult to achieve blasphemy convictions.

The appeal judges explained they had no choice but to reject it, given the way Pakistan’s laws are written, and have turned to lawmakers to craft legislation that would empower trial courts to apply a test that would make future blasphemy convictions much more difficult to achieve. That test was not in place when Aasia Bibi, was tried.

No more has yet been heard about what progress, if any, the lawmakers have made on this point.

Aasia’s case has attracted worldwide attention and led to much criticism of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws.

Aasia, 50, was the first woman to be sentenced to death under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws when she received the death penalty on 7 November 2010, after allegedly making derogatory comments about the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) during an argument with a Muslim woman. She was found guilty of blasphemy under Article 295C of Pakistan’s penal code, which imposes death sentences for offences of defamation against Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

The Muslim woman had refused water from Aasia, a colleague, on the grounds that it was “unclean” because it had been handled by a Christian. The Muslim woman and her sister were the only two witnesses in the case, but the defence failed to convince judges that their evidence lacked credibility.

Aasia was first arrested in the summer of 2009 and has since been confined to prison, mostly in the high-security District Jail Sheikhupura and now in the women’s jail in Multan.

In the High Court appeal hearing in October 2014, Aasia’s lawyer, Naeem Shakir, had argued that the main complainant in the case, the local Muslim cleric Mohammad Salaam, had not heard Aasia blaspheme, and that his original complaint, known as a first information report (FIR), had been lodged only five days after the women’s quarrel. Shakir argued in his appeal that during the trial the only reason given for this delay was “deliberation and consultation”, and said that Salaam had acknowledged this in court.

Salaam has said that it was his religious obligation to defend the dignity of the Prophet and that is why he decided to be a witness before the court. He only heard Aasia allegedly confess to blasphemy when she had been brought before a Panchayat (local village council) several days after the quarrel.

Her other main accuser, the owner of the field in which she worked, Mohamed Imran, had not been present at the time of the quarrel either; he was away from the village at the time.

Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive issue in Pakistan where 97 per cent of the population is Muslim and unproven claims regularly lead to mob violence.

Two high-profile politicians – then Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer and minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti – were murdered in 2011 after calling for reforms to the blasphemy law and describing Bibi’s trial as flawed.

Pakistan’s tough blasphemy laws have attracted criticism from rights groups, who say they are frequently misused to settle personal scores.

Lawyers who defend people accused of blasphemy — and judges seen as lenient — also risk being accused of the crime themselves and regularly face intimidation.