Pakistan delays blasphemy appeal after judge steps down

From AFP via Yahoo News. Asia Bibi’s torment continues. I believe that the Pakistani authorities don’t really want to kill her, but they are too frightened to set her free. They probably hoped she would die quietly of privation long since. 

Pakistan’s Supreme Court delayed an appeal into a notorious blasphemy case against a Christian mother on death row Thursday after one of the judges stepped down, with thousands of security forces deployed following threats from Muslim clerics.

Police and troops had been stationed across Islamabad as the court readied to hear a final appeal in the case of Asia Bibi, who has been on death row since 2010. Observers had warned of “tremendous” repercussions in the case.

But one of the three-judge bench, Justice Iqbal Hameed ur Rehman, told the court he had to recuse himself, claiming a conflict of interest. “I was a part of the bench that was hearing the case of Salmaan Taseer, and this case is related to that,” he told the court, which was overflowing with journalists, lawyers, activists and clerics.

Taseer, a liberal provincial governor, was gunned down in Islamabad in 2011 after speaking out for Bibi. His assassin, Mumtaz Qadri, was hanged earlier in 2016 in a step liberals hailed as progressive, but which brought hardliners into the streets calling for Bibi’s death. And not just the streets of Pakistan –  Muslims in England and Scotland call for the same, and only last month. 

The Supreme Court did not immediately set a new date for Bibi’s appeal.

Observers have called the case a battle for Pakistan’s soul as the state walks a line between upholding human rights and appeasing hardliners.

Clerics at the influential Red Mosque in Islamabad warned they would launch a nationwide protest if Bibi is released.

“Anyone who defends or protects a blasphemer of the Prophet will themselves be considered guilty of blasphemy,” spokesman Hafiz Ihtesham Ahmed said. He warned against foreign diplomats lobbying for Bibi’s release, saying in a statement that clerics would mobilise the public if she was freed and “everyone will become Qadri”. “All the foreign powers should keep in mind that we won’t let them succeed in their nefarious designs,” Ahmed told AFP at the court on Thursday.