Source: World Watch Monitor, April 26, 2018
Pakistan’s chief justice says he will decide, “soon,” the fate of Aasiya Noreen, a Christian woman whose 2009 conviction on blasphemy charges has fixated world attention on the country’s treatment of religious minorities.
Chief Justice Saqib Nisar told Noreen’s lawyer, Saif-ul-Malook, on April 21 that he would hear the woman’s appeal. Noreen, popularly known as Asia Bibi, has been imprisoned since 2009.
“Be ready, Saif-ul-Malook. I am going to fix your case soon and I myself will preside over the bench,” the Catholic news service UCAN reported Nisar as saying.
“Bibi’s family and everyone else who understands her ordeal [is] ecstatic at the news that her appeal will be heard soon,” Malook told UCAN. According to Pakistan Today, the Chief Justice also said that all criminal appeals before the Supreme Court will be decided by July. The report did not explicitly mention Noreen’s case, but it is a criminal matter.
Noreen, a Catholic mother of five children, was arrested for allegedly making derogatory comments about Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, during an argument with a Muslim woman. She has been in prison ever since and was sentenced to death for blasphemy a year later.
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» Grieved about levels of religious conflict in today’s world? Read Four Simple Ways to Love your Muslim Friends this Ramadan (Crescent Project).