Christians Sentenced to Death – Granted Appeal Offers Glimmer of Hope for Ayub Brothers

How have you spent the last 10 years? Working? Raising a family? Maybe completing a college degree? For our client Amoon Ayub, the last decade has been spent as a death row prisoner in Pakistan, falsely accused as a Christian for posting blasphemous content online. However, we are cautiously hopeful as the Supreme Court of Pakistan has finally agreed to hear his appeal.

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 team in Pakistan is now also representing Amoon’s brother and co-defendant, Qaisar Ayub, who was previously represented by another organization. Qaisar has asked us to represent him as well, and we are going right to work on his case.

As we have shared before, in 2011, two Christian brothers, Amoon and Qaisar Ayub, were accused of creating a blog with blasphemous content. A Muslim man saw this website, which contained the Ayub brothers’ names, phone number, 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 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 because the Court stated 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 cyber crimes 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.

In the 21-page opinion, the High Court also discussed various religious texts, justifying the blasphemy convictions. As another justification for Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, the Court provided a list of several countries, including some Western countries, where blasphemy laws are still on the books. Finally, citing a 1991 Pakistani case that made the death penalty mandatory in cases of blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad, the Lahore High Court upheld the Ayub brothers’ death sentence.

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 Pakistani High Court recently scheduled a hearing in their case, which was postponed at the last minute for reasons unrelated to our representation. Now that we are representing both Ayub brothers, we are asking Pakistan’s Supreme Court to schedule the hearing again.

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