Mohammad Asghar: A Briton on death row in Pakistan who the Government must act to save

Time is running out for a frail old man who is suffering from mental illness

David Morrisey
Tuesday 30 September 2014 16:41 BST
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Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi where Mohammad Asghar is being held
Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi where Mohammad Asghar is being held

Mohammad Asghar is 70 years old, and profoundly mentally ill. He is a British man. And he is on death row in Pakistan for Blasphemy.

People have differing views on the death penalty. But I hope most of us can agree that we should not execute a frail old man who is suffering from a mental illness.

Before he travelled to visit Pakistan, Mohammad Asghar was sectioned in an Edinburgh mental hospital, and his doctor there has made it clear that any bizarre statement he may have made about his own divine contacts would have been a bitter fruit of his long-term paranoid schizophrenia.

The Pakistan authorities certainly know that he is ill. He recently announced that he was in correspondence with the Queen in England. When questioned by Pakistan officials last Friday, he complained that “they have made my life very difficult by throwing snakes in my cell and then covering it with millions of insects that crawl all over my body.”

Mohammad has been facing execution for four years, but last Thursday a guard decided to take matters into his own hands, bursting into his cell and shooting the old man in the back. Partially restrained, the guard then screamed that he was going to “kill the blasphemer”, and kicked Mohammad as he was carried out to hospital.

Fortunately, it looks as if Mohammad will survive his injuries. But it seems very unlikely that he will survive much longer either in a Pakistani hospital or if he is discharged back to the prison system. The authorities announced the location of his hospital in the media, which has made Mohammad a target for many people who wish to do him harm.

Mohammad has been the victim of an attempted murder. It is surely not too much to ask that the British government exert every political sinew to protect him at this desperate stage – as well as protecting the brave lawyers working with Reprieve who are trying to save his life.

We now know that, on Thursday, the Pakistani authorities plan to return Mohammed to the very jail where the attempt was made on his life. It is not hard to see that returning him to prison is to return him to almost certain death.

There is, therefore, a small window in which David Cameron’s Government can act. They must ensure that one of our fellow citizens does not die, lonely and alone, in the dual prison cell of his tortured brain and a foreign jail.

David Morrissey is an actor and a supporter of the legal charity Reprieve, which is assisting Mohammed Asghar; www.reprieve.org.uk

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