(LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic Pakistani man has been freed from prison after he was sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy against Islam and spent 24 years behind bars.
Christian Solidarity International (CSI) reports that the 72-year-old Anwar Kenneth was released from jail on October 21. In 2001, he was sentenced to death on blasphemy charges against Islam’s prophet Muhammad, but in June the country’s Supreme Court overturned the ruling in the final appeal.
Kenneth is a former government official in the Fisheries Department of Pakistan. He was arrested in September 2001 after sending a letter expressing his Christian faith to an Islamic scholar and other prominent figures. CSI’s local partner in Pakistan said, “His letter exchanges were part of a scholarly debate where religious arguments and principles were shared.”
International human rights organizations had raised the alarm over his arrest and sentencing, as Kenneth was said to have had cognitive problems at the time of his arrest.
On July 18, 2002, a court in Lahore sentenced the Catholic man to death for the alleged crime of defaming the name of the Prophet Muhammad. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 500,000 rupees ($1,765 USD).
The Lahore High Court confirmed the ruling in 2014 and sentenced Kenneth to death by hanging, but the sentence was never carried out.
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After his state-appointed lawyers had abandoned him, a lawyer supported by CSI filed a final appeal to the Supreme Court of Pakistan in an effort to overturn the conviction.
After a hearing on June 25, 2025, the death sentence was lifted. Kenneth’s lawyer said that he was “an innocent person who had committed no blasphemy.” No lawyer had previously wanted to take his case, as threats had been made against them by various parties.
“There were also threats against me,” the CSI-supported lawyer said.
Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws criminalize a wide range of actions against Islam, including defiling the Koran or insulting its prophet.
According to a 2022 report, almost 2,000 people have been accused of blasphemy since the law came into effect in 1987. Eighty-six people have been extrajudicially murdered by someone after being accused of blasphemy, as the laws have created a climate of impunity for Islamic terror, leading to mob rule.
According to CSI, blasphemy prosecutions are on the rise in Pakistan, partly due to an increase in charges of “online blasphemy” brought by militant Islamic groups against young people who are often Christians.
