[JURIST] A judge in Pakistan’s Lahore District and Sessions court [official website] on Friday sentenced Liaquat Ali to death for blasphemy. Ali was arrested in 2012 on accusations of blasphemy by a Mughalpura area prayer leader. Traditionally, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws [text] made it a crime to insult religious beliefs or destroy religious objects or places of worship, punishable up to 10 years in prison. In 1986, an amendment (295-C) [text] to the law made blasphemy against the Muslim Prophet Muhammad a capital offense. Human rights groups, such as the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan [advocacy website], note that most of those accused of blasphemy are accused for desecration of the Koran, and critics say the law is often used for vengeful purposes. Ali’s codefendant, Abdul Shakoor, was acquitted.

Pakistan has faced international scrutiny in recent years for its enforcement of blasphemy laws [JURIST news archive]. Earlier this month Pakistan’s Islamabad High Court rejected an appeal [JURIST report] by Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, the man convicted of assassinating the liberal governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province Salman Taseer for his opposition to the nation’s blasphemy law. Of note, Pakistan also lifted its six-year moratorium on the death penalty this month. In October the Lahore High Court upheld the death sentence [JURIST report] for Aasiya Noreen (better known as Asia Bibi), who was convicted of blasphemy in 2010. In July, a Pakistan court convicted and sentenced a man to death for blasphemy [JURIST report], after he was arrested in 2008 for writing blasphemous statements against Islam on walls. In June three independent UN human rights experts urged Pakistan to adopt urgent legislation [JURIST report] to put an end to faith-based killings and protect the country’s Ahmadiyya Muslim community, whose faith is currently outlawed. Many Ahmadiyya Muslims are convicted of blasphemy for practicing their faith. In May Punjabi police filed charges of blasphemy against 68 lawyers [JURIST report], mostly from Pakistan’s Shiite minority, for protesting police actions. Last March a Pakistani judge sentenced a Christian man to death for blasphemy [JURIST report] after an argument with a friend set off a riot in which a Muslim crowd set fire to a Christian town.