CHRISTIANNEWS.COM.- A woman was sentenced to hang in Pakistan for allegedly sharing a cartoon of Muhammad in a WhatsApp status.
Aneeqa Ateeq, 26, has pleaded not guilty to charges that were first filed in 2020.
Ateeq told the court that her accuser, Hasnat Farooq, framed her through a religious argument after she refused to “be friendly” with him.
The woman and her accuser met in an online multiplayer game and continued to chat on WhatsApp.
“So I feel like he intentionally got into this topic to get revenge, which is why he registered a case against me and during the chat [de WhatsApp] he collected everything that went against me,” he said in an evidentiary statement.
According to Farooq, he had told Ateeq to remove the blasphemous material from her status, but she refused to remove it.
Judgment
Ateeq’s death sentence must be upheld by a Lahore High Court.
In Pakistan, blasphemy is considered a crime that carries harsh punishment, including death sentences for insulting Muhammad, reports infobae.
Increasingly, blasphemy charges have led to “extrajudicial violence, mob justice, or widespread violent protests.”
Since 1990, 80 people have been killed after being accused of blasphemy. Not only have those accused of blasphemy lost their lives, in some cases, their lawyers and family members have also been sentenced.
International rights groups point out that legal proceedings are often biased against those accused of committing blasphemy.
In a 2015 report, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) found that blasphemy trials in Pakistan were “fundamentally unfair.” In these trials they observed bias and prejudice against defendants by judges and prosecutions that do not meet due diligence requirements.
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