Woman sentenced to death over ‘blasphemous’ WhatsApp activity

A court in Pakistan has sentenced a woman to death over allegedly blasphemous messages sent over WhatsApp and Facebook.

Aneeqa Ateeq, 26, was found guilty and given a death sentence by a court in Rawalpindi on Wednesday after a complaint was registered against her under Pakistan’s draconian cybercrime and blasphemy laws.

According to the charge sheet, Ateeq met her accuser, a fellow Pakistani, online in 2019 through a mobile gaming app and the pair began corresponding over WhatsApp.

He accused her of sending blasphemous caricatures of holy prophets, making remarks about “holy personages” on WhatsApp and using her Facebook account to transmit blasphemous material to other accounts. In doing so, she “deliberately and intentionally defiles sacred righteous personalities and insulted the religious beliefs of Muslims”, according to the charge sheet.

Ateeq, who has stated that she is a practising Muslim, denied all the charges. During the trial, Ateeq told the court that she believed the complainant intentionally dragged her into a religious discussion so he could collect evidence and take “revenge” after she refused to be friendly with him.

The court found her guilty, gave her to a 20-year sentence and ordered her to be hanged.

Ateeq’s lawyer Syeda Rashida Zainab said: “I can’t comment on the judgment as the issue is very sensitive.”

Pakistan is an Islamic state and has some of the harshest blasphemy laws in the world, regularly handing down death sentences. In practice executions are not carried out and the accused spend their lives in jail.

However, blasphemy trials in Pakistan are highly dangerous, with the accused often killed by vigilantes before courts reach a verdict on their cases, while judges, fearful of the implications, rarely acquit the accused and are often pressured into reaching guilty verdicts.

Pakistan has recently asked Facebook and Twitter to help identify its citizens suspected of blasphemy so it can prosecute them or pursue their extradition.

In 2017, Taimoor Raza was the first person sentenced to death for allegedly committing blasphemy on Facebook, one of the first steps towards an intensified crackdown on dissent on social media after the passing of cyber laws._The Guardian