Pakistan (text reproduced here; link to changing page): 'A Pakistani police constable bludgeoned to death a Christian jailed on blasphemy charges, declaring he “wanted to earn a place in paradise.” Samuel Masih died last Friday from severe head injuries inflicted by Faryad Ali, a Muslim police officer in his late 20s. In the early morning hours of May 24, Ali entered the Lahore hospital ward where the Christian prisoner was being treated for advanced tuberculosis and struck Masih on the head with a brick-cutter hammer, despite a policeman on duty near the prisoner’s hospital bed. Jailed last August on accusations that he had desecrated a local mosque, Masih worked as a whitewasher and painter before his arrest. Muhammad Yaqoob, librarian of the Idara Darusalam Jinnah Garden Mosque in Lahore, filed the blasphemy charges, claiming he had seen Masih spit on the wall of a mosque near the library. “This is a case that brings out, like nothing else, the myriad contradictions these [blasphemy] laws have infused in this state and society,” commented a Daily Times editorial the day after Masih’s death. “The fact is that it is a bad law both in its conception and its implementation.”' (Compass Direct)