Pakistan

A court in Pakistan on Wednesday (Dec. 22) handed custody of a 14-year-old girl back to her Christian parents after she testified that she wished to return to them from a shelter home, sources said.

A Christian in Pakistan incarcerated for nearly 10 years on a false blasphemy conviction was released from prison on Nov. 13 after a high court acquitted him, but quietly to avoid Islamist outrage, his attorney said.

In an unprecedented court decision in Pakistan kept secret for two months to avoid Islamist backlash, a trial court judge granted bail to two Christian nurses charged with “defiling the Koran,” their attorney said.

Police in Pakistan have found a 14-year-old Christian girl who was allegedly kidnapped and forced to marry and convert to Islam, but a court on Thursday rejected her family’s attempt to recover her, ruling that Islam gives mental capacity more importance than age in such cases.

A preacher in Pakistan has been jailed and her family is in hiding after she was charged with insulting Islam and its prophet.

According to sources, on Monday, radical Muslims dawning high-powered weapons in an area of Lahore, Pakistan, opened fire at the homes of Christians, wounding a pregnant woman and at least three other people.

According to a human rights leader, a Muslim supervisor is threatening to file blasphemy charges against a Christian sanitation worker in Pakistan if she refuses to withdraw her sexual assault accusation against him.

A Pakistani Christian couple has arrived safely in Europe after they were acquitted of charges that had them on death row for seven years.

A growing number of young Christian girls in Pakistan have been kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam and forced to marry their kidnappers.

Last week, the Supreme Court of Pakistan declined to intervene in efforts to end the abduction and forced conversion/marriage of minor Christian girls in the country.