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PAKISTANI CHRISTIAN ASIA BIBI HAS DEATH PENALTY CONVICTION OVERTURNED
October 31, 2018: Pakistan's Supreme Court on 31 October 2018 acquitted a Christian woman who has been on death row for almost eight years on blasphemy charges.
Asia Bibi, a mother of five from Punjab province, was convicted of blasphemy in 2010 and sentenced to hang after she was accused of defiling the name of the Prophet Muhammed during an argument the year before with Muslim colleagues.
The workers had refused to drink from a bucket of water Asia Bibi had touched because she was not Muslim. At the time, Asia Bibi said the case was a matter of women who didn't like her "taking revenge."
She won her appeal against the conviction and subsequent death sentence on 31 October.
The court quoted Shakespeare's "King Lear" in its ruling, saying Asia Bibi appeared to have been "more sinned against than sinning."
"Even if there was some grain of truth in the allegations leveled in this case against the appellant still the glaring contradictions in the evidence of the prosecution highlighted above clearly show that the truth in this case had been mixed with a lot which was untrue," the ruling said. (Sources: CNN, 31/10/2018)
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