Waiting for travel abroad, Asia Bibi locked in Karachi house: Friend

islamabad — The Christian woman freed by the Supreme Court three months after acquitting her on a blasphemy charge has been transferred from her previous location near the capital by security forces, unable to leave Pakistan to join her daughters in Canada, a friend said on Saturday.

Amanullah, who said he spoke to Asia Bibi by telephone on Friday, said the 54-year-old Bibi is being held in a room in Karachi. He said Bibi, who spent eight years on death row, is frustrated and frightened, uncertain of when she will be able to leave Pakistan.

“She has no indication of when she will leave ... they are not telling her why she cannot leave,” said Amanullah, who fled the country on Friday after receiving threats from religious radicals angered by his assistance to Bibi, which began while she was on death row.

Amanullah has been a liaison between Bibi and European diplomats, who have sought to assist her. The court decision should have given Bibi her freedom, but Amanullah said diplomats were told that her departure from Pakistan, where she feels her life would be in danger, would come not in the “short term but in the medium term”, said Amanullah.

He said Bibi told him she is locked in one room of a house. “The door opens at food time only,” said Amanullah, and she is allowed to make phone calls in the morning and again at night. He said she usually calls her daughters.

Bibi hopes to be able to join her daughters in Canada, where they have been granted asylum.

Amanullah, a rights activist, first began aiding those falsely charged with blasphemy when his wife was wrongly accused. Since then, he has helped several people gain their freedom but Bibi’s prominence brought him to the attention of religious radicals.