Last
July 18th 2002,
a court in Lahore (Pakistan) sentenced to death Anwar
Kenneth Masih, 45, a former officer of fisheries department,
convicted for hurting the feelings of Muslims. During the trial, the
manadmitted to have
written and sent several letters –one among them even to the U.N.
general secretary Kofi Annan- in which he claimed that Mohammed was
not indeed the last prophet of Islam, stirring one of the
foundations of Muslim religion.
Kenneth,
now detained in the district jail of Multan, saw rejected by the
court a demand advanced by his lawyer to be allowed to psychiatric
examination because of his likely mentally ill conditions. Actually,
he has been claiming more and more to be Jesus Christ come down on
earth.
The
blasphemy act, inserted in the Pakistanis penal code in 1986 during
the military government of general Zia-ul Haq, provides the capital
punishment for everybody who causes offence to the “sacred name ofthe Saint Prophet”.
Kenneth
appealed before the Lahore High Court, but it has not fixed any date
of hearing yet.
The
appeal to save Anwar
The
Community of Sant’Egidio invites everybody to share its appealaiming to spare Anwar’s life from a death sentence, sending
the following text to the major Pakistanis authorities or else by
diplomatic sites, as it occurred in the past, by fax or e-mail.
His
Excellency General Pervez Musharraf,
President
and Chief Executive of Islamic Republic of Pakistan
URGENT
APPEAL PRESENTED BY THE COMMUNITY OF SANT’EGIDIO TO SAVE THE LIFE OF ANWAR
KENNETH, SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR BLASPHEMY
Your
Excellencies
We
are writing to express our deep concern over a ruling of a Lahore Court that
sentenced to death Mr.Anwar Kenneth, mentally retarded, finding him guilty
of blasphemy.
We
urge you to intervene on his behalf to preventthis cruel and inhuman punishment from being meted out against him.
We
implore you to ensure that this cruel and inhuman sentence is not carried
out.
