The Pakistani Catholic mother who spent more than eight years on death row for blaspheming Mohammed has escaped to Canada, according to her lawyer, bringing…
The Pakistani Catholic mother who spent more than eight years on death row for blaspheming Mohammed has escaped to Canada, according to her lawyer, bringing an end to her nearly decade-long persecution.
Asia Bibi, a 53-year-old mother of five, lost nearly a decade of her life awaiting execution in a prison outside Lahore, Pakistan. Her ordeal brought international attention to Pakistan’s repressive blasphemy law and roiled the country with protests and political unrest.
Bibi’s lawyer, Saiful Malook, told The Guardian that “it is a big day,” and confirmed that “Asia Bibi has left Pakistan and reached Canada. She has reunited with her family. Justice has been dispensed.”
According to a 2011 interview she did from her prison cell with French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet, Bibi claimed that her suffering began on a sweltering day in June 2009, when women from her village refused to drink after her. While they were picking berries, Bibi said, the other women told her to fetch them water from a nearby well. When she obliged, the others claimed her Christian faith had made the cup “unclean.” (EXCLUSIVE: Andrew Brunson’s American Pastor Describes Harrowing Turkish Courtroom Experience)
“I want the whole world to know that I’m going to be hanged for helping my neighbor,” Bibi recounted. “I’m guilty of having shown someone sympathy. What did I do wrong? I drank water from a well belonging to Muslim women, using ‘their’ cup, in the burning heat of the midday sun.”
Bibi’s family were the only Christians in her remote village, where she claims to have been pressed relentlessly to convert to Islam.
