A Pakistani court in central Punjab province has sentenced a Christian man to life imprisonment for a blasphemy conviction, police said.
Judge Shahid Rafiq, of the district court in the industrial city of Faisalabad, found Ranjha Masih guilty of defiling Koranic verses during a protest rally by the minority Christian community in 1998.
In a verdict handed down on Saturday, the judge also ordered Ranjha to pay a fine of 50,000 rupees (about 870 US dollars), they said.
Ranjha was accused of tearing down a billboard carrying verses from the Koran in Faisalabad during a Christian demonstration after the city's bishop committed suicide over the 1985 blasphemy law.
Faisalabad's Catholic Bishop John Joseph, who had been campaigning against the law, shot himself in the head outside a court in Sahiwal district when the judge convicted Christian Ayub Masih under the law in 1998.
Ayub Masih was charged in 1996 with blasphemy for allegedly defending British author Salman Rushdie, whose novel "The Satanic Verses" infuriated radical Mulsim clerics who accused the author of defaming Islam.
The Pakistani supreme court last year aquitted Ayub Masih, who had denied uttering any word against Islam or the Prophet Mohammad.
Blasphemy is punishable by death under the Pakistan Penal Code. However, no blasphemy convict has ever been executed in the country.
Christian rights activists campaigning against the laws, introduced by late military dictator General Zia-ul Haq, say they are mainly used to persecute Christians or to settle feuds over land.