Pakistan: Six sentenced to death for lynching Sri Lankan national

Court docket sentences six to loss of life and dozens of others to jail phrases over killing of a Sri Lankan man accused of blasphemy.

Members of a civil society group take part in a candlelight vigil to pay tribute to Sri Lankan manufacturing unit supervisor Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana [File: K.M. Chaudary/AP Photo]

A courtroom in Pakistan has sentenced six folks to loss of life after convicting them for his or her roles in final 12 months’s vigilante killing of a Sri Lankan manufacturing unit supervisor accused by employees of committing blasphemy.

The six males sentenced to loss of life had been convicted of homicide of Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana in a case that outraged many Pakistanis. The Anti-Terrorism Court docket in Lahore, arrange inside a high-security jail, additionally gave life sentences to 9 folks, 5 years’ jail to at least one, and two-year sentences to 72, in accordance with a press release from the general public prosecutor.

Diyawadana was killed in December by employees at a sports activities gear manufacturing unit in Pakistan’s jap Sialkot district the place he was a supervisor.

Few points are as galvanising in Pakistan as blasphemy, and even the slightest suggestion of an insult to Islam can supercharge protests and incite lynchings.

“The prosecution crew labored very exhausting to current its case to the courtroom and to succeed in this judgement,” Abdul Rauf Wattoo, the lead public prosecutor, instructed AFP.

“We're happy with the result.”

The particular anti-terror courtroom was established to hurry up justice in excessive profile circumstances that may in any other case spend years being processed.

Law enforcement officials escort suspects allegedly concerned within the killing of Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana, a Sri Lankan manufacturing unit supervisor, after their look in an anti-terrorism courtroom, in Gujranwala, Pakistan, on December 6, 2021 [Aftab Rizvi/AP Photo]

On the time of the killing, native police officers instructed AFP that rumours unfold that Diyawadana had torn down a non secular poster and thrown it within the dustbin.

A number of ugly video clips shared on social media confirmed a mob beating the susceptible sufferer whereas chanting slogans towards blasphemy. Different clips confirmed Diyawadana’s physique set ablaze.

Many within the mob made no try to cover their identification and a few took selfies in entrance of the burning corpse.

Rights teams say accusations of blasphemy can usually be wielded to settle private vendettas, with minorities largely the goal.

In April 2017 an indignant mob lynched college pupil Mashal Khan when he was accused of posting blasphemous content material on-line.

A Christian couple was lynched and their stays burned in a kiln in Punjab in 2014 after being falsely accused of desecrating the Quran.