...against Masih required him to issue a complete acquittal.

Lawyer Justin Gill, who led Masih’s defense team, said he expected a prison release order for the former hospital worker to be issued tomorrow. “So within two or three more days, he should be out of jail,” Gill said. “I think he doesn’t even know this yet himself, but we have told his wife. ”

According to a spokesperson from the Lahore-based Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), which handled Masih’s legal appeal process, Masih will be transferred to a secure, undisclosed location after his release.

Arrested in May 1998 during a funeral procession for former Catholic Bishop of Faisalabad John Joseph, Masih had been convicted and sentenced to life in prison by a district court in April 2003.

The 50-year-old Masih had been accused of throwing stones and knocking down a signboard that displayed a verse from the Quran during the funeral demonstrations. “The conclusion of Judge Khausa was that there was not enough evidence to maintain the conviction,” Gill told Compass. “And there were so many discrepancies between the eyewitnesses. ”

In his appeals argument before the court today, Gill said he had stressed the flat contradictions between the claims of prosecution witnesses and the testimony of the police officer who investigated the evidence a few hours after his client was arrested.

“All the eyewitnesses for the prosecution claimed that the signboard on which the (Quranic verses) were written had broken into two pieces and fallen down,” Gill said. “But the inspecting officer who conducted the investigation said in his written statement that the signboards at the scene were all intact after the incident. None of them were damaged.”

In fact, Gill told the court, it was not until 20 days later that Masih’s accusers produced the damaged signboard, claiming that he had thrown stones and a shoe at it.

This documented time lapse appeared to be a telling factor in the judge’s acquittal verdict, one courtroom observer told Compass.

This same discrepancy had been established clearly before the district court by Masih’s initial defense lawyer, Khalil Tahir Sindhu, a CLAAS spokesman said. “ So Ranjha should have been acquitted then,” he said.

But with the Faisalabad District and Sessions courtroom filled with Muslim activists and journalists, the district judge had ruled Masih guilty.

Although Masih’s alleged crime of desecrating the words of the Quran actually fell under Section 295-B of Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws, he was inexplicably charged under Section 295-C, for insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

Even more strangely, the appeals court noted today, his conviction under Section 295-C required the death penalty. But instead, the district court sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Appeals on Masih’s conviction have been on file since May 2003, although it was June 2004 when Judge Khausa agreed to hear the case.

Lawyer Gill identified the Muslim plaintiff who filed charges against his client, Muhammad Jahanzeb, as “an influential person, the son of the former mayor of Faisalabad.” Although under Pakistani law a judge can choose to take action against someone who files patently false charges, Gill admitted, “Normally this does not happen in Pakistan.”

Married with six children and several grandchildren, Masih is now 58 years old. While in jail, his hair and beard turned white and he suffered considerably from arthritis, hemorrhoids and painful swelling in his knees.

Held blindfolded and in heavy chains during his first weeks of detention, Masih told his lawyers he was beaten and tortured repeatedly by police authorities before his transfer to the Faisalabad Central Jail.

Last May, Germany’s International Society for Human Rights honored Masih with its Stephen Endowment Award for “steadfastness in maintaining his Christian beliefs” under persecution.

(Open Doors/Compass Direct News)