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Court docket sentences six to dying and dozens of others to jail phrases over killing of a Sri Lankan man accused of blasphemy.
A court docket in Pakistan has sentenced six individuals to dying after convicting them for his or her roles in final yr’s vigilante killing of a Sri Lankan manufacturing unit supervisor accused by staff of committing blasphemy.
The six males sentenced to dying had been convicted of homicide of Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana in a case that outraged many Pakistanis.
The Anti-Terrorism Court docket in Lahore, arrange inside a high-security jail, additionally gave life sentences to 9 individuals, 5 years’ jail to 1, and two-year sentences to 72, in line with a press release from the general public prosecutor. Eight of these sentenced had been juveniles.
Diyawadana was killed in December by staff at a sports activities tools manufacturing unit in Pakistan’s jap Sialkot district the place he was a supervisor.
Few points are as galvanising in Pakistan as blasphemy, and even the slightest suggestion of an insult to Islam can supercharge protests and incite lynchings.
“The prosecution crew labored very laborious to current its case to the court docket and to succeed in this judgement,” Abdul Rauf Wattoo, the lead public prosecutor, instructed AFP information company.
“We’re happy with the result.”
The particular anti-terror court docket was established to hurry up justice in excessive profile instances that may in any other case spend years being processed.
Hafiz Israr ul Haq, lawyer for one of many males sentenced to dying, known as the decision “unfair”.
“This was a case of mob violence and in such instances no particular person’s position will be ascertained with certainty,” he instructed AFP.
On the time of the killing, native police officers instructed AFP that rumours unfold that Diyawadana had torn down a non secular poster and thrown it within the dustbin.
A number of grotesque video clips shared on social media confirmed a mob beating him whereas chanting slogans in opposition to blasphemy. Different clips confirmed Diyawadana’s physique set ablaze.
Many within the mob made no try to cover their id and a few took selfies in entrance of the burning corpse.
Rights teams say accusations of blasphemy can usually be wielded to settle private vendettas, with minorities largely the goal.
In April 2017, an offended mob lynched college pupil Mashal Khan when he was accused of posting blasphemous content material on-line.
A Christian couple was lynched and their stays burned in a kiln in Punjab in 2014 after being falsely accused of desecrating the Quran.
The Centre for Social Justice – an impartial group advocating for the rights of minorities in Pakistan – says at the very least 84 individuals had been accused of committing blasphemy final yr.
Since 1990, at the very least 82 individuals have been murdered over alleged blasphemy in Pakistan, in line with an Al Jazeera tally. 5 of these killings occurred final yr alone, together with mobs stoning and burning victims to dying.
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