ICC Note:

An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Pakistan has sentenced 13 men for their involvement in the 2014 lynching of a Christian couple accused of blasphemy. According to reports, the ATC sentenced 5 men to death and another 8 men to 2 years in prison. The 5 men sentenced to death were punished for instigating the mob that ultimately attacked the Christian couple and burned them alive in the brick kiln where they worked. In November 2014, Shahzad Masih and his pregnant wife were accused of desecrating pages of the Quran in Pakistan’s Kasur District. A mob of hundreds of Muslims gathered at the brick kiln where they worked, beat the couple, and then burned them alive in the brick kiln’s furnace. Accusations of blasphemy in Pakistan can be extremely dangerous, especially when religious minorities are accused. 

11/23/2016 Pakistan (Dawn) – An Anti-Terrorism Court on Wednesday sentenced five men to death on two counts for their involvement in the burning alive of a Christian couple in Kot Radha Kishan in 2014.

ATC-I Judge Chaudhry Muhammad Azam imposed a fine of Rs200,000 on the five men identified as Mehdi Khan, Riaz Kambo, Irfan Shakoor, Muhammad Hanif, and Hafiz Ishtiaq ─ a local prayer leader ─ for their involvement in the lynching.

Eight others have also been charged with involvement in the lynching and sentenced to two years each in prison.

The eight men were identified as Muhammad Hussain, Noorul Hasan, Muhammad Arsalan, Muhammad Haris, Muhammad Muneer, Muhammad Ramazan, Irfan and Hafiz Shahid.

A challan submitted in court claimed the five men handed the death penalty gathered a large mob of hundreds by making announcements over a mosque loudspeaker and incited them to violence with incendiary speech.

A mob of around 400 people lynched Shahzad and Shama for their alleged role in desecrating the Holy Quran in November 2014. Both husband and wife were brick kiln workers from Chak-59 of Kot Radha Kishan, a town in Kasur district. The woman, mother of three, was pregnant.

Police and witnesses told Dawn in Nov 2014 that announcements had been made from mosques on Tuesday asking villagers to gather at the Yousaf brick kiln where 25-year-old Shama and her husband Shahzad Masih worked as bonded labourers.

Over 1,000 charged people from three villages took out the couple from a room (where they had taken shelter) after tearing apart its roof.

The mob tortured the couple before putting them into the kiln’s furnace.

The mob held hostage five policemen who tried to rescue the couple. The villagers also manhandled some media personnel and snatched their cameras.

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