Facebook Death Sentence?

A man in Pakistan has been sentenced to death after apparently posting ‘blasphemous content’ about the Prophet Muhammad, his wife and companions to Facebook reports the BBC.

The public prosecutor for the case thinks that this is the first related to social media, Facebook are yet to comment on the ruling and the defence lawyer for the convicted man says that his client became embroiled in an argument about Islam on Facebook with whom he thought was a stranger but in fact was a counter-terrorism official.

Amnesty International have criticized the blasphemy laws in Pakistan stating that the laws “enable abuse and violate the country’s international legal obligations to respect and protect a range of human rights, including freedom of religion or belief and of opinion and expression.

It is so severe that once a person is charged they can be denied bail and face a long and unfair trial, access to Facebook itself was blocked 7 years ago after a contest to draw images of the Prohphet Muhammad was across Facebook.