2 Christians Acquitted; Muslims Protest

In a case that has kindled fiery passions in Pakistan, an appeals court on Thursday acquitted two Christians, one a 14-year-old boy, of charges of blasphemy against Islam, a crime that carries a mandatory death penalty.

Outside the courtroom in the city of Lahore, dozens of Muslim militants in white and green turbans demanded revenge and began throwing stones when the court’s ruling was announced.

The defendants, Salamat Masih, 14, and Rehmat Masih, 40, had been convicted by a lower court Feb. 9 of scrawling anti-Islamic slogans on the wall of a mosque in a rural Punjabi village. The two, said by their attorneys not to be related, were sentenced to be hanged.

In striking down the guilty verdict and death sentences, two judges of the Lahore High Court said there is no evidence to support the verdict; the slogans the Masihs allegedly had written had been erased immediately from the mosque wall. During the trial, witnesses for the prosecution refused to repeat the offensive words on grounds of “sanctity.”

The convictions had greatly alarmed Pakistan’s Christian minority.