A Pakistani couple has appealed a court decision to award custody of their two daughters, 10 and 13, to the children's alleged kidnappers. The court based its custody decision on the girls' conversion to Islam.

'Judge' Main Naeem Sardar ruled that Saba Masih, 13, and Aneela Masih, 10, had become Muslims, invalidating their Christian parents' right to legal guardianship.

He said that because the parents are Christians and because the girls told the court that they adopted Islam, their relationship has ceased, lawyer Rashid Rehman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) told Compass. Under a common interpretation of Islamic law, a Christian cannot have custody of a Muslim.

According to the HRCP's most recent annual report on human rights in Pakistan, crime against children, especially kidnapping, remains a serious problem. In Muzaffargarh district, where Aneela and Saba Masih lived, 24 children were freed in March 2007 from a “mini-jail” at an Islamic seminary, where they had been tortured and sodomized, the HRCP reported.

According to Rehman, religious minorities are an easy target for kidnappers both because they are typically underprivileged and because of religious bias against them.

Local police and judges have their subconscious mindset that if you help Muslims [in such cases], it's a very noble cause and a very religious cause, the lawyer said.

Christian human rights lawyers in Pakistan saw a partial legal victory in a judge's ruling last week that one of two kidnapped girls must be returned to her Christian parents. The judge further ruled that her sister be free to choose whether to go with the Muslim man who allegedly forced her to convert and marry him.

The judge ruled that 10-year-old Aneela Masih be returned to her parents – an unprecedented legal victory for Christian parents of a girl who supposedly converted to Islam, according to one lawyer – while leaving her sister, 13-year-old Saba Masih, free to choose whether to go with Amjad Ali, a Muslim man who married her after the June 26 kidnapping.

Saba Masih, whose birth certificate indicates that she is now 13 but who testified that she is 17, said she did not want to return to her parents and tried to keep her little sister from returning to them. Their Muslim captors have repeatedly threatened the two girls that their parents would harm them if they returned.

Update: Small win against kidnapping with impunity

1st March 2009. See article from compassdirect.org

After months of legal deadlock, lawyers in Pakistan said they have new hope they can restore to her family a 13-year-old Christian girl who was kidnapped and forced to marry a Muslim.

Saba Masih might be returned to her family, the lawyers said, if they can legally maneuver around Pakistani policemen who have stonewalled their attempts to pursue a kidnapping case against the captors. On Feb. 21 a Pakistani judge charged the suspects with kidnapping for the first time in the seven-month legal ordeal.

The judiciary is one thing, the police are another, said Arfan Goshe, a lawyer who has taken on the custody case: I will prove [the three accused men] kidnapped Saba so the judiciary will force the police to arrest them.

The decision to file kidnapping charges marks a major shift of momentum in the case. In previous hearings judges have nearly always sided with the kidnappers – based on either dubious evidence or threats from local Islamists – in the Muslims' legal battle to retain custody of Saba and her 10-year-old sister Aneela. A court ruled the younger daughter could return to her family last September.

The Christian mother of a 12-year-old girl in Punjab Province who was kidnapped, coerced into converting to Islam and forcibly married to a 37-year-old Muslim hopes to recover her daughter at a court hearing next week.

The reaction of Pakistani law enforcement authorities to Sajida Masih's complaint so far, ridiculing her and asserting that there is nothing she can do because her daughter is now a Muslim, does not encourage her hopes of recovering her daughter Huma at the June 11 hearing.

Masih said that Muhammad Imran abducted Huma at gunpoint on Feb. 23, forcibly converted her and then married her.

Imran, father of three children, has since disappeared along with his first wife, children and new child-bride.

An Anglican Church pastor and his wife were assaulted by Security agents in Luxor on March 18, 2010, in order to evacuate them by force from their home and demolish Church property. Out of the nearly 3000 sq. meters of buildings attached to the Church, only the 400 sq. meter prayer hall was left standing.

Pastor Mahrous Karam of the Anglican Church in Luxor, said that the Church was still in negotiations with the Luxor authorities the day before regarding a replacement for the community center building which lies within the Church's compound, and was told the authorities were still considering their options. Early next morning, a 500-man force of Central Security and State Security blocked all roads leading to the Church compound, forced their way in and broke into the pastor's residence, dragging the family out by force.

In an effort to save the buildings from demolition, the Pastor sat on the fence of the Church compound, to prevent the demolition work, but was beaten and dragged away, reported Katiba Tibia News.

The Pastor's wife, Sabah, said that two men went into her flat and evacuated her by force, by slapping her face, pulling her by her clothes and dragging her by her hair. They threatened that if I do not leave the place they would take my 3-year-old boy and throw him under the bulldozers which came for the demolition work, she told Sherif Ramzy of Freecopts. Twenty traumatized children were dragged out of the attached nursery and thrown into the church hall, Sabah said.

Dr. Samir Farag, Governor of Luxor, told the media that his forces seized only one room from the Anglican Church, and denied any bodily assault on the pastor's family.

An Anglican witness said: The Governor is lying, that is why the forces blocked the road leading to the Church before their attack, so that nobody would witness their doings. But he forgot there is the Internet and cell phone videos to show the whole world the uncivilized way Egypt deals with Christians and their places of worship.

A Christian man, Arshad Masih, was burnt alive in Pakistan as he refused to convert to islam.

He died from burns which covered 80% of his body and it took three agonizing days before he finally passed away.

On March 19 a group of Islamic extremists burned alive Arshed Masih, a driver employed by a wealthy Muslim businessman in Rawalpindi. His wife worked as a maid in the same estate, situated in front of a police station. Recently disagreements had arisen between the employer, Sheikh Mohammad Sultan, and the couple because of their Christian faith. The couple had suffered threats and intimidation to force them to convert to Islam.

Arshed Masih died after three days of agony and suffering at the Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, Punjab province. His wife Martha Arshed was raped by police en she sought to denounce the violence inflicted on her husband. The couple's three children - ages 7 to 12 years - were forced to witness the torture inflicted on their parents.