Lawyer ‘risks’ all for accused
Life in shadows
LAHORE, Pakistan, March 31, (AFP): As Islamist protesters turned up the pressure on the Pakistani government this week to hang Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five convicted of blasphemy, one man is risking his own life to stand between her and the gallows.
Police guard the house in a quiet neighbourhood in Lahore where lawyer Saiful-Mulook lives with his daughter and wife.
They were deployed, he told AFP, “after intelligence officials said a group has carried out a recce of my office for a planned assassination”.
Mulook is not famous, but his client is.
Bibi has been on death row since 2010 -- convicted for blasphemy after an argument with a Muslim woman over a bowl of water.
Her plight has prompted prayers from the Vatican and calls from hardliners in Pakistan for her to be hanged, repeated this week by Islamist protesters in a stand-off with security forces in the capital.
To stay alive long enough to defend her, Mulook, who is Muslim, says he lives in the shadows, moving only between his office and home.
“Nobody comes here,” the 60-year-old told AFP.
“We don’t go out to meet relatives or friends. They don’t come here to meet us.”
The danger is real. Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in Muslimmajority Pakistan, where even unproven allegations can stir mobs and violence.
Vendettas
Rights groups say the legislation is often hijacked for personal vendettas, with minorities largely the target.
A Christian couple was lynched then burnt in a kiln in Punjab in 2014 after being falsely accused of desecrating the Quran, while Bibi was moved to solitary confinement last year over fears of vigilantes.
“When I took (her) case, my fellow lawyers said ‘You have hammered the last nail into your coffin,’” Mulook said.
But when Bibi became Mulook’s client in 2014 he was no stranger to being a target: he was also the special prosecutor in the high-profile murder case of Punjab governor Salman Taseer.
Taseer was gunned down by his bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, in Islamabad in 2011 over his call for blasphemy law reform.
The brazen killing saw Qadri feted as a hero by Islamists. Mulook was the only lawyer willing to risk their wrath to send the former police bodyguard to the gallows.
The two cases are linked: part of Taseer’s stance on the blasphemy law had been his call to see Bibi released.
Islamabad’s decision to execute Qadri on Feb 29 brought tens of thousands of people into the streets chanting slogans supporting the laws -- and calling for Bibi to be hanged.
Clashes
On Sunday, Qadri supporters marched on the capital amid violent clashes with police and staged a four-day sit-in.
They vowed they were ready to die unless the government meets their demands, including Bibi’s execution -- though they dispersed Wednesday peacefully.
Activists said the protests placed Bibi in peril, while intelligence officials warned Mulook to stay home after Qadri’s execution, he said.
But the day of Qadri’s funeral he had an important meeting in Islamabad.
Driving along the historic Grand Trunk Road towards the capital he found himself caught in a wave of hundreds of Qadri supporters heading for the funeral. It was a terrifying moment. “If they had discovered who I was they would have attacked me like vultures, making pieces of me,” he said.
Qadri is a “goldmine” for the mullahs, Mulook said.
“They were losing their space in society so they were declaring each other infidels. But now they have found one common element... Mumtaz Qadri.”
Now his colleagues look at him with distaste when he walks in the courtroom.
“Friends told me that you are crazy,” he said. “They said I was being an enemy to my own family.”
Pakistan has 17 people on death row for blasphemy, including Bibi, but has not executed anyone yet.
Mulook sees little hope, and warns the “Qadri phenomenon” will only grow.
Sharif cancels visit:
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has canceled plans to visit the United States after a bombing on Sunday killed 70 people in Lahore, the White House said on Wednesday after Sharif and President Barack Obama spoke by phone.
“President Obama expressed his understanding of Prime Minister Sharif’s decision to cancel his visit to the United States and remain in Pakistan following this terrorist attack,” the White House said in a statement. (RTRS)
City announces rat-killing bounty:
Authorities in Pakistan’s northwest announced a bounty for killing rats after receiving hundreds of complaints of rodents in- festing the region’s biggest city.
Rats described as being up to 12 inches (30 centimetres) long are making life miserable in Peshawar, residents said.
They are so huge that “even cats are scared of them,” Hammad Khan, a Peshawar resident, told AFP Thursday, adding that the rodents were gnawing “everything: food, clothes, even damaging the structure of the house”.
Residents said the toothy creatures make their home in an open sewer which flows through the city and come out at night, scurrying about poor neighbourhoods.
“We were receiving such complaints constantly and that’s why we announced the reward,” district mayor Arbab Mohammad Asim told AFP.
The bounty was set at 25 rupees (25 US cents) in most parts of the city, though in some areas it goes up to 300 rupees, officials said.