Christian pastor shot dead in Pakistan prison

Gunman also wounds 70-year-old British man on death row.

Pakistan:  Christian pastor Zafar Bhatti’s trial for violating Pakistan’s blasphemy law never got to the court verdict stage. That’s because Bhatti was shot dead Thursday in his Rawalpindi prison cell in an attack that also wounded his cellmate, 70-year-old British citizen Muhammad Asghar.

The motives of the alleged gunman, a member of an elite police unit, aren’t known. Regardless, Bhatti and Asghar are the latest victims of Pakistan’s dangerously ambiguous and discriminatory blasphemy law.

Police arrested Bhatti in 2012 on suspicion of sending “blasphemous” text messages, despite evidence indicating that the phone from which the messages were sent didn’t belong to him.

Ashgar’s conviction in January — based on allegations that he claimed to be a “prophet” of Islam — ignored evidence that he suffers from mental illness. Asghar, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in the United Kingdom in 2010, declared his prophethood in court and even included a reference to it on his business card, a government prosecutor said at the time of his trial.

An official at Adiyala Prison in Rawalpindi confirmed that Asghar had been shot by a “jail employee” and was now “in a stable condition”.

"The employee has been arrested and investigations have been launched," the official said, requesting anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive issue in Pakistan, where 97 percent of the population is Muslim. Section 295-C of Pakistan’s penal code makes the death penalty mandatory for blasphemy, though no one has yet been executed for the crime. The vagueness of the blasphemy law has long spelled peril for Pakistan’s religious minorities.

The law allows prosecution for derogatory remarks about Islam based on criteria including “imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly” without providing criteria for such assessments.

Targets of the law have included Christians and the minority Ahmadiyya community, a heterodox sect that identifies itself as Muslim but has been declared non-Muslim under Pakistani law.

Bhatti and Ashgar are only the law’s latest victims. On 7 May, unidentified gunmen killed human rights activist and lawyer Rashid Rehman in an apparent reprisal for his willingness to represent people charged under the law. Rehman’s attackers remain at large.

Last week, gunmen shot dead University of Karachi professor Muhammed Shakil Auj for his liberal views on Islam. Auj had been labeled a "blasphemer" in a text message campaign.

Meanwhile, thousands have been charged under various provisions of the law since it was added to the penal code in 1986, including several dozen in 2013 alone.

At least 18 people are currently on death row for blasphemy in Pakistan, while another 20 are serving life sentences.

Sources: Human Rights Watch/AFP