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********** PAKISTANI CHRISTIANS’ BLASPHEMY APPEAL SET FOR TOMORROW Defense Lawyer: ‘Definitely a Case for Acquittal’ by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, January 23 (Compass) — Some 32 months after a Pakistan court handed down life prison sentences to two Christian brothers for alleged blasphemy, the Lahore High Court will hear final appeal arguments on the case tomorrow.

A formal appeal hearing for Rasheed and Saleem Masih has been delayed repeatedly since a lower court verdict was issued against them in May 2000. The case had been posted on the court’s appeal docket four times since last June, but each time it was postponed — usually when time ran out on the high court’s overloaded case schedule.

However, the Lahore High Court finally considered the case two days ago, ordering lawyers of the defendants and their accuser to present their final arguments before Lahore High Court Justice Rustam Ali Malik on January 24.

“This is definitely a case for acquittal,” the Masihs’ defense lawyer Pervez Aslam Chaudhry told Compass today.

“We are very hopeful about this appeal,” another Lahore source agreed.

Nevertheless, the accuser’s lawyer has called for the Masih brothers’ execution, demanding in a petition last May that the court “enhance” their 35-year prison sentences and give them the death penalty.

But according to a team of lawyers from the Lahore-based Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), the long-delayed blasphemy case against the Masih brothers is fraught with blatant legal irregularities.

Jailed without bail since June 1999, Rasheed and Saleem Masih were accused of slandering the Muslim prophet Mohammed during an argument with an ice cream vendor. The incident occurred in the Pasrur region of northeastern Pakistan, when the Muslim vendor refused to serve the two Christians from the same bowls used by Muslims.

Tomorrow’s defense appeal is expected to expose a number of discrepancies between the testimony of the original plaintiff, Maqsood Ahmed, and that of other prosecution witnesses. Although the initial complaint to the police only reported a fistfight, when a formal accusation was filed six days later, the accuser claimed that the two had committed blasphemy.

According to CLAAS investigators, however, the Muslim plaintiffs carried a grudge against the two brothers after losing a civil land dispute against them. Although litigation documents were submitted which proved one of the prosecution witnesses had lied about this to the court, the evidence was ignored in the lower court judgment.

In terms of legal procedure, the brothers had been booked under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone convicted of slandering the prophet Mohammed. But inexplicably, the lower court judge in Pasrur who found them guilty sentenced them to 25 years in prison.

Additional Sessions Court Judge Rana Mohammed Yousaf also tacked on another 10 years each for “insulting Islam” under Section 295-A. Since the law stipulates this accusation can only be tried in the country’s Anti-Terrorist Courts, Judge Yousaf did not have any legal jurisdiction to rule on this statute.

After being jailed for the first 18 months in Sialkot, the two Christians were then transferred to Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail while awaiting the appeal of their conviction. Then last June, a convicted murderer incarcerated in the same prison shot and killed a Muslim inmate who was also appealing an alleged blasphemy sentence.

With their defense lawyers expressing mounting concern for the Masih brothers’ safety, Punjab authorities ordered them transferred in September to the Sahiwal Central Jail “for security reasons.” But according to a “Dawn” newspaper report on September 30, the authorities simultaneously transferred with them the very prisoner who had committed the June murder at Kot Lakhpat Jail.

Two months ago, the two brothers escaped injury when a riot broke out in the Sahiwal prison, leaving one prisoner dead and another 30 injured. Death row cells of 150 prisoners were broken open, the gallows set on fire and five jail employees taken hostage before police regained control with a heavy barrage of gunfire and tear gas.

Their September transfer to the Sahiwal jail moved the Masih brothers 150 miles away from their wives and children in Sabu Mohaal village, near Pasrur. The distance has made it difficult and expensive for their families to visit them, CLAAS confirmed to Compass today. “It’s a full day for them to go and come by bus, about six hours each way and they can only see them maximum for half an hour, not more,” a CLAAS representative said.

Rasheed Masih, now 36, has five children, and Saleem, 32, has three. During their first two years in prison, their elder brother Hamid Masih had provided for his two sisters-in-law and their eight children in their home village. But after his home was robbed and his wife raped by four assailants in June 2001, Hamid Masih moved his family out of the region to the relative anonymity of a large city.

The Masih brothers’ village is less than 20 miles from Chianwali, where three Christians were killed and another 13 injured in a Christmas night attack on a village church last month.

END

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********** Copyright 2003 Compass Direct

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