PAKISTAN – Christian teenager jailed for blasphemy
22/03/06
Killing of blasphemy suspects "not uncommon"
Shahid Masih – If convicted of 'blasphemy', he could get a life sentence, or he could be killed by Muslims just for being accused of it
Lawyer Khalil Tahir Sindhu asked Faisalabad city police to throw out the case against his client, Shahid Masih. According to Mr Sindhu, the sole evidence against the young Christian was the testimony of a Muslim man previously accused of the same crime.
Shahid, aged 17, is implicated for breaking article 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code, one of the country's notorious blasphemy laws that criminalises desecration of the Quran.
If convicted, Shahid will serve a life sentence.
The young man allegedly tore pages from a tafseer – a book explaining Quranic verses, whilst stealing several books from a medical clinic in the Madina Town district of Faisalabad last week.
The charges are based on the testimony of Muhammad Ghaffar, who claimed he had carried out the crime with Shahid.
Mr Ghaffar was detained after Dr Mohammad Arshed Masood arrived at his Madina Town clinic on 10 September to find several books missing and pages ripped from his tafseer, Mr Sindhu said.
The doctor lodged a complaint with police against Mr Ghaffar, aged 19, whom he suspected of committing the robbery. According to Mr Sindhu, Mr Ghaffar told police that he and Shahid had ripped pages from the tafseer when the two young men broke into the clinic planning to steal and then resell books.
Both suspects are being held in Faisalabad's District Jail while police conclude their investigation.
Mr Sindhu, who agreed to take Shahid's case pro bono, was unsure what motivation Mr Ghaffar would have for implicating Shahid:
"The two of them live in the same locality and apparently they exchanged harsh words some 15 days ago," Mr Sindhu said after talking with Shahid.
According to the lawyer, charges against Shahid will not stand in court because Pakistani law does not allow the testimony of a person accused of a crime to be used as evidence for, or against, another person.
"Mr Ghaffar was already accused, so his testimony is not valid in the eyes of the law," Mr Sindhu said.
Though Shahid's parents admitted their son has had problems with drugs in the past, they do not believe he is guilty of blasphemy.
Christian politician
The family has employed the help of a Christian representative in the Punjab Provincial Assembly to secure Shahid's release.
"I submitted an appeal to Pervaiz Elahi [Chief Minister of Punjab] yesterday, saying the case is totally false and requesting that police reinvestigate it," provincial assembly member Joel Amir Sahotra reported.
Mr Sahotra said that Elahi had already ordered Faisalabad's Additional Inspector General, Talat Mahmood, to review the case.
For Mr Sahotra, there was no doubt that Shahid is one of many people falsely accused each year under Pakistan's blasphemy laws.
"In the last four years I have been personally involved in eight false cases of blasphemy against Christians," Mr Sahotra commented.
Charges of blasphemy, whether real or invented, often draw the attention of fanatical Muslim groups who are quick to take justice into their own hands when they believe a suspect has been unfairly acquitted.
Shahid's parents and 12 siblings were so afraid of negative attention from such groups that they at first refused to visit Shahid in prison, Mr Sindhu said.
Their fears appear to have been well founded.
More than 200 Islamist fanatics attended Shahid and Mr Ghaffar's first hearing before Judicial Magistrate Ghullam Fareed Qurashi in Faisalabad on 14 September, Mr Sindhu said.
Extra-judicial killings of blasphemy prisoners in Pakistan are not uncommon.
At least 23 people involved in blasphemy cases have been murdered in Pakistan since the controversial laws were instituted in the 1980s, according to the National Commission for Justice and Peace.
Although Christians constitute less than 2 per cent of the country's population, a quarter of the victims were Christians.
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