Pakistan Supreme Court To Hear Christian Brothers’ Final Appeal

Here at home, we would not imagine that someone would spend an entire decade in prison merely for exercising his right to freedom of speech or religion. Further, imagine if the same person didn’t even exercise that right, but still went to jail for that long because he was falsely accused of such a “crime.” This is exactly what has happened with two of our clients in Pakistan.

Two Christian brothers, Amoon Ayub and Qaiser Ayub, have spent over 10 years on death row in Pakistan over a false accusation of posting blasphemous content online. The trial court sentenced them to death, the appeals court upheld their conviction, and now the Supreme Court of Pakistan will hear their final appeal. However, each time the Court schedules a hearing, the opposing counsels appear on the day of the argument and ask for a continuance as a way to delay the hearing.

Our affiliate in Pakistan, the Organization for Legal Aid (OLA), has been representing Amoon for over a decade during his trial and appeal before the High Court. Simultaneously, our teams at the ACLJ and the ECLJ have been advocating for him before the U.N. Human Rights Council and Special Rapporteurs. Our legal team in Pakistan is now also representing Amoon’s brother and co-defendant, Qaisar Ayub, who was previously represented by another organization.

As we have shared before, in 2011, Amoon and Qaisar were falsely accused of creating a blog with blasphemous content. A Muslim man saw this website, which contained the Ayub brothers’ names, phone numbers, and address. Based on the contact information listed on the website, the police filed charges against both brothers.

Qaisar was arrested in November 2014, and Amoon in April 2015. The trial court convicted them in December 2018 and sentenced them to death, erroneously reasoning that the presence of the Ayub brothers’ contact details on the website containing supposedly blasphemous material “clearly led to the conclusion” that they were responsible for creating the website and its content. During the trial, the Ayub brothers testified that they had a fight with a Muslim acquaintance who must have created the website and posted their names on it. The police did not investigate the Muslim acquaintance.

We appealed the trial court’s decision in the Lahore High Court. Two years later, the High Court heard arguments. On June 8, 2022, the High Court’s two-judge bench upheld the death sentence. The decision was also flawed for numerous reasons, including the Court’s finding that, according to the Cyber Crimes Report’s technical analysis, the website in question was created using the landline phone number and email address listed on the website. However, the Cyber Crimes Report says no such thing. It states that the contact information available on the website belongs to Qaisar and Amoon. Therefore, anyone with that information could have simply used it when creating the website.

The Cyber Crimes Report further states that the cybercrimes department sent multiple requests to WordPress (the company that owns the website), inquiring about the identity of the person who posted the material on the specific blog in question but did not get any response. The Court simply disregarded this vital piece of evidence. In short, the prosecution had no evidence that the Ayub brothers created the website or posted the blog in question.

Since June 2022, we have filed multiple petitions with various bodies at the U.N., seeking intervention with the Pakistani authorities in this case. The Supreme Court of Pakistan recently put the case on the docket. At the last two hearings, the opposing counsels appeared, and each time asked the judges to grant a continuance because they were not prepared to argue the case.

After three continuances, the Court is again scheduled to hear the argument on November 11. We have no doubt that the opposing counsel will again pull some stunt to delay the case and keep the Ayub brothers in prison. However, we are hopeful that the judges also will do the right thing by hearing the argument and acquitting the Ayub brothers.

Please pray that the Court hears the case this time, and pray for protection for Qaisar, Amoon, the lawyers on our team, and the judges. Pray that the judges would desire justice and mercy for these brothers. We will keep you posted as this case progresses.