(PPF/IFEX) – Four journalists from the Abbotabad daily “Mohasib” who were charged under the blasphemy law in early June 2001 were released on bail on Wednesday 18 July. The four newsmen were released from District Jail, Abbottabad, and brought to the Abbottabad Press Club by journalists and friends in the form of a procession. The […]
(PPF/IFEX) – Four journalists from the Abbotabad daily “Mohasib” who were charged under the blasphemy law in early June 2001 were released on bail on Wednesday 18 July. The four newsmen were released from District Jail, Abbottabad, and brought to the Abbottabad Press Club by journalists and friends in the form of a procession.
The publication of an article entitled “The Beard and Islam” in the 29 May issue of the daily “Mohasib”, which criticised the view held by certain religious leaders that keeping beards was mandatory for Muslims, angered the president of Khatm-e-Nabuwat Youth Force, a local religious organisation. On 3 June, the organisation filed a complaint against the author of the article, Jamil Yousaf, as well as the newspaper’s staff and management. Police raided and sealed the offices of the daily and arrested the newspaper’s managing editor, Muhammad Shahid Chaudhry, and sub-editor Raja Muhammad Haroon, and filed a case against the writer the same day. News editor Shakil Ahmed Tahirkheli was arrested on 4 June, and the daily’s editor, Mohammed Zaman Khan, was arrested on 8 June. The article’s author and the other arrested journalists were charged under sections 295-A and 295-C of Pakistan’s Penal Code. A conviction under these sections carries the death penalty.
The newspaper contested the claim that the article was blasphemous and stated that the article had only contested the views of certain religious leaders who claim it is a sin not to keep beards. The Pakistani government and the provincial government of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) supported the newspaper’s assertion that there was nothing in the article that was blasphemous.
National and international journalist bodies, including the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors, The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, the USA-based Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters sans frontières had earlier condemned the journalists’ arrests and called for their immediate release.
