A 70-year-old Briton suffering from paranoid schizophrenia is facing a death sentence in Pakistan. This is no joke
It is part of my job description to be offensive. I can, if I wish, make a joke hoping that Alex Salmond, now he is at the end of his political life, lays 20,000 fish eggs and dies. I can make a joke pointing out that David Cameron told off Sri Lanka for human rights abuses committed with weapons Britain sold it – like Ronald McDonald calling you a fat bastard.
The most I risk from saying such things is alienating a stranger. The same cannot be said of
Mohammed Asghar. He is 70, and suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. He was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh. When they discharged him he went to Pakistan, perhaps to escape what he thought were the undue restrictions on his liberty. Before he had been there long – four years ago now, in 2010 –
he was facing a death sentence for blasphemy.
Apparently Asghar claimed to be a prophet sent by God. As
his Scottish doctor reports, if he said that it was definitely his psychosis talking. I cannot believe that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Pakistan, Scotland or anywhere else think that he should be executed for this.
Yet a small minority of vocal people do, and one of them – a police officer at the maximum security prison where he was being held – tried to murder Asghar last Thursday. The guard burst into his cell with a pistol and shot him in the back. He shot again, but missed, before being partially restrained by others. Then, as Asghar was being taken to hospital, the guard managed to get a last kick in, crying out that he wanted to “kill the blasphemer”.
Source: The Guardian, Frankie Boyle, Sept. 29, 2014
