A court on July 13 sentenced a Christian to life in prison for alleged blasphemy.
This was in spite of the fact that the complainant retracted the accusation and admitted that police pressured him into making it, his attorney said.
No evidence
Attorney Javed Sahotra said that prosecutors at the court in Toba Tek Singh District in Punjab Province produced no evidence that 29-year-old Sajjad Masih denigrated the prophet of Islam, and that Islamist mobs pressured the judge into the conviction and verdict. Masih was also ordered to pay a fine of 200,000 rupees (US$1,980).
Text messages
Gojra police arrested Masih, of Pakpattan, Punjab Province, on accusations that he had sent text messages mocking Islam’s prophet Muhammad to Muslim clerics and others in Gojra on December 11 2011. Gojra is about a two-and-a-half hour drive from Pakpattan.
Evaded arrest
Sahotra said that Masih had evaded repeated attempts to arrest him after learning of the accusations against him, but that, on December 28 2011, area Christian leaders accompanied him to the Gojra City police station so that he could record a statement.
‘The police refused to let him leave and put him behind bars’, Sahotra said, adding that a case was registered against Masih under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s widely condemned blasphemy laws, which call for death or life imprisonment (25 years in Pakistan) of any person found guilty of blaspheming Muhammad.
While awaiting trial, Masih has been abused and tortured.
