{"id":34888,"date":"2020-02-04T14:16:58","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T14:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acnmalta.org\/?p=34888"},"modified":"2020-02-04T14:16:58","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T14:16:58","slug":"pakistan-freedom-at-last-for-40-christians-after-5-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/02\/04\/pakistan-freedom-at-last-for-40-christians-after-5-years-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"PAKISTAN: Freedom at Last for 40 Christians After 5 Years in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><\/style><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Christians across Pakistan are rejoicing after a court (Wednesday, 29<sup>th<\/sup> January) acquitted 40 men jailed for alleged involvement in the lynching of two people in a district outside Lahore.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The 40 individuals, almost all of them Christians, shouted \u201cAlleluia, Praise God\u201d as the anti-terrorism court in Lahore ordered their release after nearly five years in custody.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">More than 40 others, on bail after being accused of lesser offences that took place at about the same time in Youhanabad district, were also acquitted.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">They had all been arrested as police responded to riots in Youhanabad sparked by suicide bomb attacks on two churches one Sunday morning in March 2015, in which at least 15 people were killed and more than 70 were injured.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) just hours after the acquittal verdict, Father Emmanuel \u2018Mani\u2019 Yousaf described how emotion swept through the court as the accused began to absorb the court\u2019s decision, citing insufficient evidence to prove the men\u2019s guilt.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Reporting that the accused were now back home with their families, Father Yousaf said: \u201cWhat we have seen today is wonderful news for Pakistan.\u201d \u201cThroughout Pakistan, people had been praying, every day praying that the court would rule in their favour. It is a big day for us all.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe accused have been through a big, big trauma and now, thank God, come out the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Father Yousaf, National Director of the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP), went on to thank ACN for providing legal and paralegal aid, which, he said, had been crucial to the successful outcome of the case. As well as funding legal fees, the charity sponsored schooling for the families of the accused and gifts at Easter and Christmas.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He said: \u201cFirst of all, we are very grateful to ACN. With the charity\u2019s support and prayers, all the accused are now free. Thanks to ACN, they are now able to restart their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Father Yousaf said that two of the accused had died in jail amid reports of physical maltreatment and pressure to convert to Islam.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">ACN has pledged to continue helping the families of the accused, especially over the coming year. Father Yousaf explained how the families of the accused had struggled to cover basic costs as the men behind bars had been \u201cthe major bread winners\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He said that starting again back home would be difficult for a number of the men who had suffered multiple bereavements of close family members during their incarceration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christians across Pakistan are rejoicing after a court (Wednesday, 29th January) acquitted 40 men jailed for alleged involvement in the lynching of two people in a district outside Lahore. The 40 individuals, almost all of them Christians, shouted \u201cAlleluia, Praise God\u201d as the anti-terrorism court in Lahore ordered their release after nearly five years in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34889,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-newsletters"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>PAKISTAN: Freedom at Last for 40 Christians After 5 Years in Prison - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/02\/04\/pakistan-freedom-at-last-for-40-christians-after-5-years-in-prison\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"PAKISTAN: Freedom at Last for 40 Christians After 5 Years in Prison - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Christians across Pakistan are rejoicing after a court (Wednesday, 29th January) acquitted 40 men jailed for alleged involvement in the lynching of two people in a district outside Lahore. 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