2 Pakistanis Acquitted of Blaspheming Islam

In a case that has kindled fiery passions in this country, an appeals court on Thursday acquitted two Christians, one a 14-year-old boy, of charges of blasphemy against Islam, a crime that carries a mandatory death penalty.

Outside the courtroom in the city of Lahore, dozens of Muslim militants in white and green turbans demanded revenge and began throwing stones when the court’s ruling was announced.

The defendants, Salamat Masih, 14, and Rehmat Masih, 40, had been convicted by a lower court on Feb. 9 of scrawling anti-Islamic slogans on the wall of a mosque in a rural Punjabi village. The two, said by their attorneys not to be related, were sentenced to be hanged.

In striking down the guilty verdict and death sentences, two judges of the Lahore High Court said there was no evidence to support them. The slogans the Masihs allegedly wrote were immediately erased from the mosque wall. During the trial, witnesses for the prosecution refused to repeat the offensive words on grounds of “sanctity.”

Though defense attorneys protested the lack of proof, the trial judge ruled that the allegations were so serious that no pious Muslim would falsely make them.

The convictions greatly alarmed Pakistan’s Christian minority, which held prayer services Wednesday night in support of the accused. The case also highlighted the growing problem Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto faces in dealing with fundamentalists in her overwhelmingly Muslim nation and threatened to embarrass her during her April visit to the United States.

In reversing the convictions, appellate Judge Arif Iqbal Bhatti said it appeared “some elements were trying to create provocation and mischief around the case.”

“This will be a landmark judgment,” Bhatti said. “The decision is based on law, our consciences and keeping in view the fact that we are answerable to God and his last prophet (Mohammed).”

The Masihs were also charged with throwing anti-Islamic leaflets into the mosque, but Bhatti said the paper on which blasphemous words allegedly had been written were not the work of the accused.

Joseph Francis, a Christian human rights activist, said, “This decision has restored the confidence of minorities.”

A prosecution lawyer, Rashid Murtaza Qureshi, charged Bhutto with putting pressure on the Lahore judges and said he will appeal to the Supreme Court. He stalked out of the courtroom earlier in the day, calling it a “kangaroo court.”

The High Court ordered the release of the defendants, who are now in prison. But their defense lawyer said she feared for their lives.

Muslim zealots have threatened to kill the Masihs, as well as judges and lawyers involved in the case.