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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — She has been isolated on death row for eight years after an accusation with little evidence that she had spoken against the Prophet Muhammad. A prominent governor who spoke out in her defense was killed by his own bodyguard, and mobs have rallied against the suggestion that leniency might be in order.
But for the first time since her arrest in 2009, Asia Bibi, the Christian Pakistani woman whose blasphemy conviction the following year rallied international condemnation of a law that has inspired violence again and again, is free.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday fully acquitted her and ordered her “released forthwith,” in an exceptionally rare ruling against a blasphemy verdict. The ruling, by a three-member bench of the court, was announced by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar.
“This is a landmark verdict,” said Omar Waraich, the deputy South Asia director at Amnesty International. “Despite her protest of innocence, and despite the lack of evidence against her, this case was used to rouse angry mobs, justify the assassinations of two senior officials, and intimidate the Pakistani state into capitulation. Justice has finally prevailed.”
Mr. Waraich added, “The message must go out that the blasphemy laws will no longer be used to persecute the country’s most vulnerable minorities.”
But given the realities in Pakistan, where last year a mob lynched a student on just the rumor that he had committed blasphemy, Ms. Bibi is likely to spend the rest of her life as a marked woman. Almost immediately after the ruling, Islamist groups were calling for protests.
Ms. Bibi’s case has drawn worldwide condemnation and calls for overturning Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which in effect has been used by extremists as a bludgeon against religious minorities.
Ms. Bibi, a former farmworker with five children, found herself at the center of the issue in June 2009 in her hometown, Ittan Wali, a dusty farming village 60 miles west of Lahore in Punjab Province.
On a hot summer day, Ms. Bibi had gone to pick berries with her Muslim co-workers. She brought water for them on the orders of a local landlord, but the Muslim women refused to touch the water bowl. A bitter argument ensued, each side presenting a different version of the verbal exchange. Muslims said Ms. Bibi had uttered vile abuses against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Ms. Bibi insisted she had not and that she was the victim of false accusations prompted by bigotry. She was dragged to a local police station and charged with blasphemy, and until Wednesday remained in jail.
Blasphemy remains a highly combustible issue in Pakistan. Mere allegations can set off spasms of violence and mass riots. Several religious parties have used it to flex their muscles.
The blasphemy law prescribes a death sentence for anyone convicted of insulting Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. But critics say the law has been mostly misused, often to settle personal vendettas and property disputes. Religious minorities are especially vulnerable to such accusations, and people who have advocated changes in the blasphemy law have met with violence.
In 2011, Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province and an outspoken secular politician who had campaigned for Ms. Bibi’s release and changes in the country’s blasphemy laws, was shot and killed by his police bodyguard outside a cafe in an upscale area of Islamabad, the capital.
The man who killed Mr. Taseer, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, instantly became a celebrity among Islamist groups. And though he was sentenced to death for the killing, and hanged in 2016, he spent his days on death row as a revered religious figure.
A shrine to him has been built on the outskirts of Islamabad, and a religious party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik, led by the firebrand cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi, has staged several crippling protest sit-ins over blasphemy allegations.
In November 2017, Mr. Rizvi and his supporters blocked the entrance to Islamabad for several weeks, demanding the resignation of the then law minister after a controversial amendment to the country’s electoral laws was deemed blasphemous by hard-line clerics.
On Tuesday evening, Mr. Rizvi warned in a video message against the reversal of Ms. Bibi’s death sentence and told his supporters to remain on standby for protests. Security forces were put on high alert in several Pakistani cities as the Supreme Court announced its verdict on Wednesday.
