No quick pardon for Aasia: Taseer gets death threats for backing condemned woman

The officials says President Asif Ali Zardari plans to give courts a chance to act on an appeal filed by the woman’s lawyer.
Minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti met on Thursday with Zardari and recommended that Aasia Bibi be freed as soon as possible. He says that while Zardari refused to immediately pardon Bibi, he agreed to do so if the appeal is delayed in court.
The mother of five’s case prompted an appeal Pope Benedict XVI after she was sentenced earlier this month to die for insulting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Her family says she was falsely accused over a personal dispute.
Meanwhile, Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer has received death threats from clerics of the Deobandi movement for supporting pardon for Bibi.
Member of the National Assembly Sahibzada Fazl Karim, a representative of the Barelvi movement, said his organization would stage demonstrations across the country if someone involved in a “crime like blasphemy is granted pardon”.
“It would be too much if the woman is set free. Death is the only punishment for a person who commits blasphemy,” he told reporters in Islamabad.
Another cleric, Qari Hanif Jalandhari, who represents the Deobandi school of thought, also warned Zardari not to pardon Bibi.
“I advise (Zardari) not to take a hasty decision under foreign pressure,” he told a press conference. “Such a decision will lead to untoward repercussions.”
Hanif heads Wafaqul Madaris Al-Arabia (WMA), an umbrella organization that has more than 12,000 seminaries across Pakistan, mostly in Punjab, where many people accused of blasphemy have lost their lives at the hands of religious zealots.
An organization that wields control over Barelvi seminaries has also joined the Deobandis in a bid to change the president’s decision, which they think he has already taken. The two sects have a long history of opposing each other on almost every issue.
In Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar, protesters openly warned the government of dire consequences if a presidential pardon was granted to Bibi. Bhatti was assigned to gather facts about the case by Zardari. “According to my own investigations, it was a personal dispute and she did not commit blasphemy; she is innocent and her case is baseless,” he told journalists on Thursday.
Bhatti added that the blasphemy law should not be scrapped off and demanded further investigations, arguing that the person who complained to the police was not even present at the scene.
   — With input from agencies