Lawyer says "blasphemy" journalist to appeal

A Pakistani journalist sentenced to life for blasphemy was "subjected to an unfair trial" and will appeal against the verdict, his defence lawyer Kamran Arif told IRIN on Tuesday. The North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) High Court in the provincial capital Peshawar convicted Munawar Mohsin on 8 July after he published a letter - considered blasphemous - written by a third party in the opinions page of the leading regional daily newspaper, the Frontier Post. NWFP elected a provincial authority last year dominated by religious conservatives who have tried to ban screenings of "lewd" films and are opposed to mixed schools. Arif, who will appeal the case at Pakistan's High Court in the capital Islamabad, said that the trial should not have continued after witnesses indicated that the defendant might not understand the proceedings. "Mohsin had a history of mental illness, he was severely addicted [to drugs] which affected his mental state at the time of the offence and, more importantly, at the time of the trial," Arif said. The lawyer said the decision that Mohsin was indeed fit for trial was based on a judge's assessment that the defendant had replied lucidly to questions. Arif maintained that to ensure a fair trial, a qualified doctor should have evaluated the defendant's mental state. Blasphemy can carry the death penalty in Pakistan, although no such sentence has ever been applied. Arif estimates that if the appeal fails, Mohsin will serve a total of 14 of his 25-year life sentence. The appeal is due to take place within the next two years. Meanwhile, the journalist remains in custody. Arif said he believed the national court in Islamabad would be more sympathetic than the state-level judge in Peshawar. "I think it will be better received at the High Court, certainly a very, very big difference." Arif said the need for sensitivity towards such a high-profile Islamic issue had made the judge overly cautious. "The thing is that judges there don't feel comfortable with blasphemy cases, particularly a case like this where it has led to so much destruction already," he said. After the letter appeared, angry demonstrations took place at the newspaper's offices and then across the country. The paper's printing press in Peshawar was attacked and set on fire in protest. The Pakistani government then banned the Frontier Post from publishing for two months. Human rights campaigners and organisations representing journalists have widely criticised the court's decision and the government's consequent reaction. The journalist's rights group Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters without Borders), based in Paris, registered its "outrage" in a public statement on its website. The organisation's secretary-general, Robert Ménard, said: "Because he printed something written by someone else does not necessarily mean he agreed with its content in any way." The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wrote an open letter to Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf saying it was "shocked by the government's handling of the crisis" and appealed for Mohsin's release. The letter, signed by the CPJ's executive director, Ann Cooper, said the president's public condemnation of the Frontier Post and his failure to quell protests "put the journalists of the paper in extreme danger".