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ISLAMABAD: One week after the country 's highest court ordered release, a Pakistani Christian who' s spent eight years on death row for blasphemy in prison Wednesday, with no immediate prospect of freedom.
Thousands of Islamists on the streets in protest after Supreme Court judges overturned Asia Bibi's conviction, in a case that the country is divided between traditionalists and modernizers in the devoutly Muslim nation.
Ultra-conservative Islamists, President of the Supreme Court of Immanuel, President of the Supreme Court.
Critics blasted the climbdown – which came just a few days after Khan vowed to confront the protesters – as another capitulation to religious conservatives.
The deal has left Bibi in the legal limbo – and languishing in jail for a crime of which she has been acquitted.
"Asia Bibi is in Multan jail and has not been released yet." Zawar Hussain Warraich, minister for prisons in Punjab province, told AFP.
"Normally we receive orders in the past few days and we are in the process of being arrested, but we are still in the process of being killed," Warraich added .
"Supreme Court should issue a directive that we will release it as soon as we get it."
He denied reports that he had been ugly for Bibi, saying "she is already well protected by the jail staff".
An appeal has been filed against the court against the protests demanding its execution, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, has been warned its hardliners have been prepared to take over the streets again.
Blasphemy is an incendiary charge in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unsubstantiated allegations of insulting Islam can result in death at the hands of mobs.
The case stems from an incident in 2009 when Bibi was asked to fetch water while working in the fields. Muslim women laborers objected, saying that a non-Muslim, she should not touch the water bowl, and reportedly a fight erupted.
A local imam then claimed Bibi insulted the Mohammed Prophet – a charge she has consistently denied.
Bibi's husband Ashiq Masih has appealed to Britain or the United States to grant the family asylum, while his lawyer has fled to the Netherlands.
Masih said the delay in releasing his wife, a mother of five, was adding to the family's agony.
"The daughters are weeping." "They are still shattered," he said. – AFP
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