A court in Pakistan has sentenced six people to death after convicting them for their roles in last year’s vigilante killing of a Sri Lankan factory manager accused by workers of committing blasphemy.
The six men sentenced to death were convicted of murder of Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana in a case that outraged many Pakistanis. The Anti-Terrorism Court in Lahore, set up inside a high-security prison, also gave life sentences to nine people, five years’ jail to one, and two-year sentences to 72, according to a statement from the public prosecutor. Eight of those sentenced were juveniles.
Diyawadana was killed in December by workers at a sports equipment factory in Pakistan’s eastern Sialkot district where he was a manager.
Few issues are as galvanising in Pakistan as blasphemy, and even the slightest suggestion of an insult to Islam can supercharge protests and incite lynchings. Hafiz Israr ul Haq, lawyer for one of the men sentenced to death, called the verdict “unfair”.
“This was a case of mob violence and in such cases no individual’s role can be ascertained with certainty,” he told AFP.