Blasphemy Trials in Pakistan: Legal Process as Punishment

The TrialWatch initiative of the Clooney Foundation for Justice published a report on Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and trials. Authored by Zimran Samuel, who is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London, the report zooms in on the blasphemy laws in practice (and malpractice) based on the monitoring of trials in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province, over the course of 6 months in 2022. The monitoring concerned 24 cases, which amounted to more than 250 hearings: in 15 cases, the accused were detained; 217 examined hearings resulted in adjournments, most frequently because prosecution witnesses or complainants were absent; in five cases, the defendants showed mental health concerns; two cases resulted in convictions – one life sentence and one death penalty. “There are few barriers to prevent essentially anyone from registering a case,” Samuel writes, “and accused persons are often swiftly arrested [...] becom[ing] mired in proceedings that stretch on nearly indefinitely.”