The Dutch government has offered Asia Bibi’s lawyer Saiful Malook temporary asylum in the Netherlands. Netherlands Foreign Minister Stef Blok said the country has offered Malook a place in their Shelter City program for human rights defenders at risk. Malook on Tuesday had said he wanted to remain on the Dutch soil. He had fled to the Netherlands from Pakistan after violent protests erupted over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the blasphemy conviction of Asia Bibi. At a news conference in The Hague on Monday, the lawyer had said he was ‘put on a plane against his wishes’ even though he had refused to leave the country without ensuring that his client was out of the prison. But in an about-turn a day later, he said, “If the Netherlands as a country which defends human rights, does not help me or shelter me, I would prefer to return to Pakistan to be assassinated.”
Published in Daily Times, November 9th 2018.
