Supreme Court stays execution of Asia Bibi

Convicted woman’s lawyer says he will expose allegedly manipulated evidence to secure his client’s freedom.

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The allegations against Bibi date back to June 2009, when she was laboring in a field and a dispute broke out with some Muslim women with whom she was working.

A three-member panel of judges heard the case in Supreme Court’s Lahore registry and admitted Asia Bibi’s petition for full hearing after initial arguments by her defence lawyer besides staying her execution till the matter is adjudicated.

Staying the execution of a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has admitted for hearing a petition filed by the death-row prisoner, who was convicted on blasphemy charges.

Bibi’s family and lawyer have high hopes that she would be acquitted. She had filed an appeal in the Supreme Court in November 2014 as her final legal recourse one month after the Lahore High Court upheld her death sentence. A few days later the women went to a local cleric and made the blasphemy allegations. Bibi was rescued by the police but, under pressure from the crowd, they charged her under Section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code, the country’s notorious anti-blasphemy law.

Asia Bibi’s sentence in November, 2010 sparked global condemnation.

While the Supreme Court of Pakistan has never upheld a death penalty conviction in blasphemy cases, there are heightened fears of attacks against Bibi.

Christians, who make up about 1.6% of the country’s 200 million people, claim they are often discriminated against and marginalised by the Muslim majority.