ISLAMABAD:Responding to the Pakistan Supreme Court’s decision to acquit Aasia Bibi, also known as Aasia Noreen, of blasphemy charges after she was sentenced to death by a trial court in 2010, Amnesty International’s (AI) Deputy South Asia Director, Omar Waraich, on Wednesday said that :“This is a landmark verdict and an important victory for religious tolerance in Pakistan.
It said for nearly eight years, Aasia Bibi, a poor Christian farmhand and mother of five, had her life languish in limbo.
On the basis of no credible evidence, she was sentenced to death in 2010. The people who spoke up for her were threatened and even killed.
“This was a case that was used to rouse angry and violent mobs, to justify the assassinations of two senior officials in 2011, and to intimidate the Pakistani state into submission. Mercifully, justice has prevailed. A clear message must now go out that the blasphemy laws will no longer be used to persecute Pakistan’s long-suffering religious minorities.”