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Pakistan
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Pakistan keeps Chinese engineer in top-security jail to avoid mob attack over blasphemy charge

  • The Chinese man is in solitary confinement after being lifted by helicopter to a maximum-security prison 200km away from Dasu
  • Police made the switch by adding several terrorism-related charges to the blasphemy complaint registered by the engineer’s two accusers

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Pakistani police arrested a Chinese national on blasphemy charges after he allegedly insulted Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, authorities said. Under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws, the offense carries the death penalty. Photo: Xinhua
Tom HussainandUmar Bacha

Pakistan has taken extraordinary precautions to protect a Chinese engineer arrested by police on Sunday amid a mob attack instigated by a group that accused him of blasphemy.

Under Pakistani law, blasphemy penalties range from fines to the death penalty.

Identified in police records as “Mr Tian, in-charge of heavy transportation” at the under construction Dasu hydropower plant in northern Pakistan, the engineer was evacuated by helicopter on Monday afternoon to the garrison city of Abbottabad, 217km away.

He has been placed in solitary confinement under heavy guard at the nearby Haripur top-security prison on the orders of an anti-terrorist court.

Police inspector Nasiruddin, the chief of Komila police station where Tian was initially held, said technical legal steps were taken on Monday to ensure he was not held in the Kohistan region, where Dasu is located.

Authorities there feared the Chinese engineer would be vulnerable to another mob attack, either at the police station or during any scheduled appearance at the local court, as long as he remained in the area, he said.

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