January 22, 2010: Pakistan: Man sentenced to life under "blasphemy" law.
Taken from the Persecution Blog.
Pakistani Christian Sentenced to Life under ‘Blasphemy’ Law
Taken from the Persecution Blog.
Pakistani Christian Sentenced to Life under ‘Blasphemy’ Law
The following is from our friends at Compass Direct. You may read the full story here. As you read this story, and see how our brother has been accused falsely, remember the words of Joseph, what man meant for evil, the Lord intended for good.
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Young man convicted of ‘desecrating Quran’ by accusation of rival shopkeeper.
FAISALABAD, Pakistan, January 22 (CDN) — A young Christian shopkeeper was sentenced to a life term in prison and fined more than $1,000 last week following a dubious conviction of desecrating the Quran, according to Pakistan’s National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP).Peter Jacob, general secretary of the NCJP, said 22-year-old Imran Masih of the Faisalabad suburb of Hajvairy was convicted of desecrating the Quran (Section 295-B of Pakistan’s legal code) and thereby outraging religious feelings (Section 295-A) by Additional District & Sessions Judge Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan on Jan. 11. The conviction was based on the accusation of a rival shopkeeper who, as part of an Islamic extremist proselytizing group, allegedly used a mosque loudspeaker system to incite a mob that beat Masih and ransacked his shop.
Neighboring shopkeeper Hajji Liaquat Abdul Ghafoor accused Masih of tearing out pages of the Quran and burning them on July 1, 2009. Denying that he burned any pages of the Quran, Masih told investigators that the papers he burned were a heap of old merchandise records he had gathered while cleaning his store.
