Pakistan Sentences Muslim To Death For Killing Christian (Worthy News In-Depth)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent, Worthy News
LAHORE, PAKISTAN (Worthy News) – A Pakistani court has upheld the death sentence of a Muslim man for killing a Christian because he married his sister after she turned to faith in Christ.
The late June ruling by the Lahore High Court was confirmed early Tuesday by a lawyer involved in the case and court documents obtained by Worthy News.
“The Sessions Court Lahore sentenced [the attacker] Muhammad Azhar to death. Muhammad Azhar appealed the trial court’s decision in the Lahore High Court, but the High Court dismissed his appeal,” said Tahir Bashir, a Christian attorney representing the murdered victim’s father in court.
“Aleem Masih was murdered in the name of honor because he had married a Muslim woman, Nadia Bibi,” Bashir told Worthy News early Tuesday.
Her Muslim family was also furious about her conversion to Christianity, Bashir confirmed. While the couple was ‘Muslim’ on paper, they both had embraced faith in Christ, the lawyer suggested.
“According to Islamic law, for a non-Muslim to marry a Muslim, they are required to convert to Islam,” Bashir noticed.
PAPER CONVERSION
“Therefore, many people [including Aleem Masih] ‘convert’ to Islam for marriage purposes. They just need to declare their conversion on paper without necessarily changing their beliefs or faith from within,” he explained to Worthy News.
The Masihs got married in 2014 after Nadia “gave her life to Jesus at the dismay of her Muslim parents,” Christians said at the time.
The Masihs fled to Narang Mandi, a town about 37 miles (60 kilometers) from Lahore, to avoid being targeted by “an act of honor violence” after receiving threats, Worthy News learned.
Soon, Nadia Bibi’s Muslim family launched a manhunt for them to avenge “the shame” their daughter had brought upon them by recanting Islam and marrying a Christian, according to human rights activists.
Witnesses claimed that Nadia Bibi’s father, Muhammad Din Meo, and her brothers stopped a rickshaw that the couple was riding in and abducted the couple at gunpoint. The family then took the married couple to a farm where they beat and shot the husband and wife.
“The Muslim men first brutally tortured the couple with fists and kicks and then thrice shot Aleem Masih. One bullet hit him in his ankle, the second in the ribs, while the third targeted his face,” said Aneeqa Maria, an attorney of the human rights organization The Voice Society. “Nadia was shot in the abdomen.”
The attackers apparently left the farm believing that they had killed both Aleem and Nadia. “The attackers returned to their village and publicly proclaimed that they had avenged their humiliation and restored the pride of the Muslims by killing the couple in cold blood,” Maria explained. “Nadia’s brother, Azhar, then presented himself before the police and confessed to having killed his sister and her Christian husband.”
STILL BREATHING
When police arrived at the scene of the crime, Nadia Bibi was still breathing. She was taken to a general hospital in Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city, where bullets were removed from her abdomen, according to investigators.
While at least one co-accused was declared not guilty, the Lahore High Court said there was enough evidence to send Muhammad Azhar to death. It rejected arguments that Nadia Bibi could not have seen the gunman firing as her back was turned toward him.
“The recovery of the weapon of offense provides strong corroboration for the prosecution’s case. Moreover, as all the crime empties matched with the pistol recovered from the appellant, it strongly suggests that he is responsible for inflicting injuries on the person of the deceased and injured,” the Court said in documents obtained by Worthy News.
“The number of injuries” on the deceased suggested that Azhar “committed the murder in a ruthless manner to take the revenge” for the Christian “contracting marriage with his sister,” the Court stressed.
The injuries inflicted on his wife, who testified in court, also corroborate that she was fired at due to the above grudge. In the given circumstances, the prosecution has also succeeded to prove motive part of the occurrence by producing cogent and unimpeachable evidence,” the judges added.
The Court condemned the unprovoked and unrestrained outburst of rage, saying the accused had “committed the most heinous act of murdering his brother-in-law and causing grievous injuries to his real sister. Such an act of savagery, perpetrated in a state of uncontrollable fury, reflects an appalling degree of callousness and brutality, marked by a complete indifference to the value of human life and an utter disregard for the most basic familial norms.”
The Lahore High Court agreed with the death penalty, usually carried out by hanging in Pakistan. “One of the fundamental objectives of criminal punishment is to serve as a deterrent, not only to prevent the offender from reoffending but also to discourage others from engaging in similar criminal conduct. In cases involving brutal and cold-blooded murders, the imposition of the maximum punishment prescribed by law is essential to uphold the rule of law and to send a strong message that such heinous acts will not be tolerated by the law.”
EXECUTION CONTROVERSIAL
Bashir, a Christian who survived attempts on his life related to his work as an attorney, said he realized that the “implementation of the death penalty is a topic of ongoing debate, but I won’t delve into that.”
He added, “According to the law of the land, the court has to decide based on the evidence presented. If a defendant is proven to have committed murder without justification, the law prescribes the death penalty as the punishment.”
Bashir told Worthy News, however, that the accused still “has the option to approach the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court also dismisses the appeal, then the sentence is carried out.”
The unusual severe punishment of a Muslim for acts against a Christian comes amid a broader debate about the persecution of Christians in Pakistan, a heavily Islamic nation. “In this entire story, two things are particularly significant: one is the issue of honour killings, and the other is religious hatred, which highlights the animosity between two different religious majority and minority groups,” Bashir added referring to Muslims and Christians.
Pakistan ranks 8th on the annual World Watch List of 50 nations where advocacy group Open Doors says Christians face the most persecution for their faith in Christ.
Christians comprise nearly two percent of Pakistan’s mainly Muslim population of roughly 252 million people, according to Christian researchers.
Although thousands of Pakistani Christians have been displaced, churches continue to be active in often difficult circumstances, Worthy News documented.
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