A judge on Wednesday (July 9) handed a life sentence to a Muslim found guilty of abducting and raping a Christian girl but ignored accusations of forcible conversion and fraudulent marriage, the victim’s attorney said.
Fulani herdsmen attacked two villages in Kaduna state, Nigeria on Monday (July 7), killing two Christians and wounding three others, after terrorizing villagers in another area in June, local residents said.
During an evening worship service on Monday (July 7), suspected Islamic extremists gunned down a Baptist pastor and another worshipper and kidnapped a woman in Katsina state, northwest Nigeria.
A court on Tuesday (July 8) acquitted two Christian youths of a false blasphemy charge rooted in a minor dispute, their lawyer said.
In a significant development, a court in Pakistan refused to hand custody of a Catholic girl to a Muslim who abducted and forcibly converted/married her, noting that as a minor she could not go with him even if she said she was willing to do so, sources said.
Less than three weeks after a large-scale massacre in Benue state’s predominantly Christian Yelwata village in Nigeria, four Christians were slain in the same county, sources said.
Fears of another large-scale attack on Christians are growing in Benue state, Nigeria, where Fulani herdsmen slaughtered up to 200 people in Yelwata village on June 13-14, sources said.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan today (June 25) ordered the acquittal of an elderly Christian on death row for 23 years on a blasphemy conviction, declaring that a person of unsound mind could not be held liable for such a crime, his lawyer said.
A Christian girl who this month escaped the Muslim who kidnapped her said he forcibly converted her to Islam and repeatedly sexually assaulted her as his “wife.”
A Christian mother of five children in Pakistan was raped at gunpoint by a Muslim who had been harassing and pressuring her to convert to Islam and marry him, her husband said.
Police have taken no action in the forcible conversion/marriage of a Christian girl kidnapped in Pakistan on June 11, a rights advocate said.
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are being systematically misused to target religious minorities, dispossess the poor and settle personal and economic disputes, according to a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.
