Pakistani Teen Sentenced to Life for Killing Blasphemy Accused in Court

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A court convicted a Pakistani teen on November 23rd for killing a man who was standing on trial back in 2020 for blasphemy charges.

An anti-terrorism court in the northwestern city of Peshawar convicted Faisal Khan, who was reportedly around 15 or 17 at the time of the incident, of killing a 57-year-old Pakistani-American man who was arrested in Pakistan back in 2018 after Awais Malik, a madrassa student, accused him of blasphemy after the victim allegedly claimed he was a prophet.

Naseem allegedly struck up an online conversation with Malik while he was in the United States. Malik said he met Naseem in a shopping mall in Peshawar to discuss his views on religion, after which he filed a case against him with the police.

The victim, Tahir Ahmad Naseem, was a member of the Ahmadiyya sect, a persecuted religious minority who is not considered Muslims legally by Pakistan. Some accounts say he left the Ahmadis and embraced Sunni Islam, whereas the cleric who allegedly oversaw his conversion claims Naseem did so insincerely.

The court judge handed down the order inside the Peshawar Central Prison, where the trial was conducted due to security reasons. The judge also declared that the prosecution was able to prove its case against Khan, who was named Khalid during the time of the murder and Khan’s eventual arrest, and the evidence connected him to the incident.

Khan was found guilty of violating Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 7 of the country’s Anti-Terrorism Act. He was sentenced to life in prison with a fine of one million Pakistani rupees (equivalent to 3,600 US dollars).

However, due to a lack of evidence, the court acquitted two of the co-accused, a cleric named Wasiullah and a lawyer named Tufail Zia. The anti-terrorism court judge conducted the trial in his capacity as a juvenile court judge.

Prosecutors claimed that Wasiullah instigated Khan to commit the murder, while Tufail Zia took the pistol used to murder Naseem from Wasiullah and handed it over to Khan while in court. 

Naseem was seated in court after arguments in his case and was waiting to be transferred to prison when Khan broke into the courtroom and shot Naseem at point-blank range on July 29, 2020. Khan claimed the Prophet Muhammad visited him in his dream and was given the explicit command to commit the murder. 

Khan was arrested by police from the courtroom. A video shows him in handcuffs, where he was shouting angrily that Naseem was an "enemy of Islam.”

At the time of the murder, Khan was celebrated by religious fundamentalists as well as local politicians and clerics as a hero, and many lawyers even offered to defend him for free, seeing his crime as a justified retribution against a blasphemer. 

Naseem’s daughter, Mashal, started an online petition asking the United Nations as well as the United States Department of State to push for an end to Pakistan’s hardline blasphemy laws, which are often used to settle personal scores and persecute religious minorities. 

Mashal, who was subjected to numerous death threats, even requested to have Khan extradited to the United States, as Naseem was a US citizen at the time of his death, as she believed Khan’s trial would not be impartial.

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