An elderly British man faces up to three years in a Pakistani prison after he was tricked into reading the Koran in public.
Masud Ahmad, 72, belongs to the minority Ahmadiyya sect, who under Pakistani law are banned from calling themselves Muslim, with Amnesty International saying he was deliberately tricked into reading the holy book in Lahore by figures linked to a right-wing religious group.
The case comes just a week after Mohammad Asghar, a 69-year-old alleged paranoid schizophrenic from Edinburgh, was sentenced to death in Pakistan for apparently claiming to be the Prophet Mohammad in letters he wrote to government officials.
It is believed Mr Ahmad was secretly filmed reading from the Koran in November last year by two men posing as patients at the homeopathy clinic he ran in Lahore.
Amnesty International say he was maliciously targeted because of his religion.
Every year dozens of Ahmadi Muslims are charged with breaching Pakistan's strict blasphemy laws simply for practicing Islam, while they and other minority groups are also at risk of sectarian violence.
Speaking to The Independent, Mr Ahmad's son Abbas, 39, said: 'We are concerned he will never see his nine grandchildren but we are concerned with his life. We know what happens [in] these sort of cases.'
Abbas Ahmad said his father had been released on bail ahead of a trial and is currently in secure accommodation.
He added: We want to bring him back to Britain... In Pakistan there is no justice. Someone has made a false case and they have sent him to prison for nothing'.
Until he returned to Pakistan in 1982 for an operation to remove a tumour, Mr Ahmad had lived in London for 22-years working as a photographer.
His case echoes that of Mohammad Asghar - the mentally ill man from Edinburgh who was sentenced to death in Pakistan last week after he allegedly claimed to be the Prophet Mohammad.
Mr Asghar was arrested in 2010 in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad, for making the claims in letters he sent to various government officials.
But a lawyer who defended Mr Asghar said and the case was really a property dispute and that his 69-year-old client is currently in very poor health facing death for a crime that was never committed.
Amnesty International's deputy Asia Pacific director Polly Truscott said: 'Mohammad Asghar is now facing the gallows simply for writing a series of letters. He does not deserve punishment. No one should be charged on the basis of this sort of conduct.
David Cameron spoke out against the verdict in the week, saying he was 'deeply concerned' that the Pakistani court had failed to include medical evidence in Mr Asghar's trial.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2550046/British-pensioner-facing-three-years-Pakistan-jail-tricked-reading-Koran-public.html#ixzz2s6UfIfbI
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