law, just days after a mentally-ill Christian and a Christian teenager were released from prison.
Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed reportedly said the law, which allows up to the death penalty for insulting Islam, would be changed after a general election due late this year or early next year.
After detailing at a Paris academic conference steps taken to improve conditions for religious minorities, the senator was asked when Islamabad would reform the blasphemy law.
"Inshallah (God willing), after the election," said Hussain, secretary general of the governing Pakistan Muslim League party and chairman of the Pakistan Senate’s foreign affairs committee in comments distributed by Reuters news agency.
"We don’t want to hand another election issue to our ‘friends’," he added, referring to the opposition Islamic parties. He did not detail how the law would be changed.
CHRISTIAN ACGUITTED
The comments came shortly after the Lahore High Court on Friday, January 19 overturned Shahbaz Masih Kaka’s 25-year "life sentence", citing evidence that the Christian was mentally handicapped.
Judges in Lahore found him therefore not guilty and set him free after he spent 18 months in jail. In comments distributed by Catholic news agency AsiaNews, Lawyer Khalil Tahir said he regretted his clients was spent one and a half year in jail.
"Even during the first trial, the defense had presented evidence demonstrating Mr. Masih’s innocence from blasphemy charges, but Judge Shahid Rafiq bowed to pressure from Islamic extremists and on September 25, 2004, imposed a long sentence," he said.
In a separate case, the Faisalabad District Court last week also ordered the release on bail of Shahid Masih, a 17-year-old Christian boy detained four months ago on blasphemy charges.
BAIL PRICE
The judge reportedly set bail at 100,000 rupees (USD 165), several times an average monthly salary here. Masih was arrested on September 11, 2006, for allegedly tearing pages from a book explaining Quranic verses.
He was charged under section 295B of Pakistan’s Penal Code, better known as the blasphemy laws, which provides for life imprisonment and a possible death sentence for anyone who desecrates the Koran. The law is a bit more lenient when it comes to “offending the Islamic world”, but it is regularly used to settle private disputes and affects both Muslims and Christians, analysts and human rights groups say.
The charges were filed by Arshad Masood, a doctor from a clinic located near the young Christian’s home. According to Dr Masood, the boy, acting at the night when no one could see, entered the clinic and ripped up the book.
“The judge agreed that the evidence was weak and that the plaintiff had accused the boy for personal reasons. Thank God that someone innocent got bail and can sleep tonight at home after spending more than four months in isolation,” Khalil Tahir, Masih’s lawyer, told AsiaNews.
