Journalist to life imprisonment for blasphemy

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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I do not wish to discuss the validity of the blasphemy law but instead would like to see if someone has the original text of the penal code. Particularly, how does the court decides what is blasphemous & what is not.

Also, if someone has the details on the original letter published in Frontier Post, then please provide a link.

Life term for Pakistan journalist

Haroon Rashid
BBC correspondent in Peshawar

A court in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province has sentenced a journalist to life imprisonment for blasphemy.

Munawar Mohsin, a sub-editor at the Frontier Post newspaper was convicted of publishing a blasphemous letter that led to violent protests across the country.

Mohsin’s lawyer said his client would appeal to the provincial court.

Two other defendants - former Frontier Post news editor Aftab Ahmad and computers chief Wajeehul Hassan were acquitted.

The additional district and sessions judge in Peshawar, Sardar Irshad, said the prosecution had not proved the case against them.

An arrest warrant was issued against a fourth man, newspaper managing editor Mahmood Shah Afridi, who has absconded.

Mob attack

In addition to his jail term, Mohsin, 40, was fined 50,000 rupees ($865).

The court ruling said: “The accused was responsible for selection of the letter in question and subsequently he sent the same for the purpose of printing.”

The letter was published on 29 January, 2001.

It was written by a person named Ben DZec and appeared in the Your Views column of the newspaper.

The letter contained remarks about the Prophet Mohammed deemed derogatory.

The day after it was printed, a violent mob attacked the offices of the newspaper, set the printing press on fire and damaged other public property, including a cinema.

The Frontier Post quickly carried large advertisements in national dailies apologising for publishing the letter and Mr Afridi also apologised.

However, publication of the newspaper was suspended for a few months after the incident.

Mohsin had been in detention since the publication of the letter.

Blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan but no convict has ever been executed.

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Ahmadjee: I am well aware of the insides of this case, and all i can say is that this verdict is disgusting. The guy who wrote the letter that triggered the attack on the FP, must be laughing at the Judge for punishing a man who made a terrible mistake.

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the guy in question was in a position of authority. he know wht he was doing and still he went on with it. he must pay for his decisions. :-)

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EP: I could say the guy put in charge of the letters page, had just been released from Drug rehab and hadn't been paid for several months for previous work done or that the FP was collapsing at the time financially, or for that matter the fact that the offending letter was not written by the sub editor and had been published by other newspapers but in a edited form or that the writer of the offending letter was immensely happy to see he was proved right when he said he believed Muslims as backward savages..I could sayy all those things, and a lot more, but the fact is what has happened is a travesty of justice and when you are dealing with peoples lives, Judges should set very high standards when it comes to verdicts.

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There is also something called forgivness in Islam... That guy made a mistake, and I am sure it was a mistake, as one cannot dare do such things in Pakistan. The nation should have forgiven him, for he was not the one who wrote that.

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EDITORIAL: Blasphemy law strikes again
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_10-7-2003_pg3_1
The Additional District and Sessions judge, Peshawar, Mr Sardar Irshad, has sentenced Mr Munawwar Mohsin, a mentally ill sub-editor of the daily “The Frontier Post”, to life imprisonment and a fine of Rs 50,000 for committing “blasphemy”. The facts of this case speak for themselves. On 29 January 2001, a letter sent by a foreigner via e-mail was inadvertently published in the letters column of “The Frontier Post”. The paper was in financial crisis and was hard put to find good English-language journalists in Peshawar. Sub-editor Munawwar Mohsin, who was on duty on the night when the letter landed, did not comprehend the content of the letter and allowed it to be cut-and-pasted into the letters column. There was an uproar in the city upon the publication of the said letter, during which the “The Frontier Post” office was gutted and a cinema house put on fire. A judicial inquiry into the incident by Justice Qaim Jan Khan discovered that journalist Munawwar Mohsin was a drug addict who had just days earlier run away from the city’s mental hospital. The doctor there had informed the newspaper about it and then told the inquiry judge that the boy was mentally ill. The judicial inquiry therefore found him of unsound mind. But the sessions judge who sentenced Munawwar Mohsin to life imprisonment Tuesday decided that he was of sound mind. He thought in his wisdom that it was enough that the prosecution had not pursued the “diminished liability” line for him to dispense with professional medical opinion and pass the sentence.

This is distressing. Judge Irshad is simply reacting to the “revolutionary” Islamic MMA regime of Mr Akram Durrani in the NWFP and nailing his own true colours to the mast. After coming to power, the MMA regime announced that, among other things, it would pursue accelerated prosecution of blasphemy cases and even wrote to the federal government to direct its attention to this matter with seriousness. In fact, when a false case of blasphemy was brought against a teacher in Lahore by a vested interest bent on victimising him, the Peshawar assembly especially discussed the issue and asked the government to expedite the prosecution. The upshot was that the said teacher was let off by the Lahore High Court, but was murdered outside the court by some unknown “pious” Muslims. But Judge Irshad of Peshawar is not the only sessions judge who has sought paradise through a judgment such as this one. In August 2000, a Lahore sessions judge (incidentally, a relative of General Zia) convicted one Yusuf Ali of blasphemy and sentenced him to death. But the judgement was so badly written that the convicted person was sure he would get off on appeal. However, to make sure that he was dispatched, a fellow-prisoner shot him to death when he was being taken out of his death-cell. Needless to say, the murderer was connected to a religious militia. At the high tide of jihad in the early 1900s, a retired judge of the Lahore High Court was killed in his office by a fanatic who thought he had wrongly bailed out a 14-year-old boy accused of blasphemy in Gujranwala.

The internationally abominated blasphemy law in Pakistan has, in one case after another, been exposed by judges who are either too scared to stand up to extremist religious elements or overly keen to prove their “pious credentials”. Meanwhile, human rights organisations and minorities’ forums have ceaselessly condemned a law that gives a handle to the fanatics among us to vent their extremism as a legal norm. The law was duly politicised after it was criticised for the sweeping ambit of its wording. The extent of this politicisation can be gauged from the fact that on one occasion a judge of the Lahore High Court actually went public with the statement that blasphemers should be killed by the people in the streets instead of being brought before the court.

That the law on blasphemy is defective has been noted by everyone, including such prestigious retired judges of the higher judiciary as Justice Javed Iqbal of the Supreme Court of Pakistan who has mentioned it in his memoirs. The honourable Supreme Court this year allowed poor Ayub Masih to walk free after four years in the death-cell. He was convicted by a sessions judge of Faisalabad, but so tendentious was his judgement that Bishop John Jacob of the Faisalabad diocese committed suicide in front of the courthouse to put the world on notice. The European Parliament thereafter passed a resolution against the blasphemy law and the United States has a law pending on the statute book specifically monitoring prosecution under the blasphemy law and enabling Congress to stop all aid to offending states. General Musharraf was so conscious of the evil of this law that he sought to strike it off the books in 2000, but was deterred by his secret agencies who feared that the Jama’at-e Islami would make political capital out of it.

This controversial judgment also comes at a time when General Musharraf’s Pakistan in general and the MMA’s NWFP in particular are under the scrutiny of the international community. It will reinforce all the negative perceptions of Pakistan and erode the good work that General Musharraf has done to try and rectify Pakistan’s image abroad. How unfortunate. Where is the honourable Attorney General of Pakistan, who is a member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan? Why isn’t he doing something to stop this madness from enveloping us all? Poor Munawwar Mohsin. We hope he will soon be acquitted by the High Court on appeal and sent back to the hospital for the cure he deserves as a human being. *

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Zakk: *
EP: I could say the guy put in charge of the letters page, had just been released from Drug rehab and hadn't been paid for several months for previous work done or that the FP was collapsing at the time financially, or for that matter the fact that the offending letter was not written by the sub editor and had been published by other newspapers but in a edited form or that the writer of the offending letter was immensely happy to see he was proved right when he said he believed Muslims as backward savages..I could sayy all those things, and a lot more, but the fact is what has happened is a travesty of justice and when you are dealing with peoples lives, Judges should set very high standards when it comes to verdicts.
[/QUOTE]

you can say whatever you want to say. that still won't change the facts.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by EntityParadigm: *
the guy in question was in a position of authority. he know wht he was doing and still he went on with it. he must pay for his decisions. :-)
[/QUOTE]

He made a mistake, and he has apologised for it. Our Prophet (PBUH) forgave people who had committed much graver errors, and even people who had caused him harm.

This "Blasphemy law" should be either be reformed wholesale i.e. disallow blasphemy against the religious personalities of all religions, or it should be scrapped completely. It has caused far to many injustices to the minorties in Pakistan.