ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered authorities Thursday to immediately release a Christian sentenced to death for blasphemy in 1998, the state-run news agency said.
Defense attorney Abid Minto told the court Thursday that his client, Ayub Masih, had never made the allegedly blasphemous statements, but instead was a victim of a plot to steal his land, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported. The court agreed and ordered Masih released.
Masih was arrested in Punjab province in 1996 after a neighbor complained that Masih made statements supporting British writer Salman Rushdie, who was condemned to death by Iranian leaders because his novel "The Satanic Verses" was considered blasphemous to Islam.
Masih was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to death, a decision that sparked nationwide protests by minority Christian groups and human rights organizations. Nevertheless, lower appeals courts upheld the conviction.
Minto produced evidence that the accuser had used the conviction to force Masih's family off of their land and then acquired the deed to it through a housing program, the agency reported.
Under Pakistani Islamic law, only the word of a Muslim accuser is needed to prosecute a non-Muslim on blasphemy charges, which can carry the death penalty upon conviction.
About 97 percent of Pakistan's 145 million people are Muslim. Christians constitute a small portion of the remaining 3 percent, though Christian leaders insist that they are at least six percent of the total population.