LAHORE, Pakistan — A court here found a Christian sanitation worker guilty of blasphemy on Thursday and sentenced him to death, in a case that set off rioting and the torching of a Christian neighborhood last year.

That was the case in March 2013, when a Muslim friend of the condemned man, Sawan Masih, said that during an argument between the men, Mr. Masih had insulted the Prophet Muhammad. Two days later, enraged mobs swept through Joseph Colony, a Christian neighborhood in the city of Lahore, and set more than 170 houses and two churches on fire. 

A lawyer for Mr. Masih, 35, said Thursday that he would appeal the case to the Lahore High Court, which must sign off on death penalty cases. In a statement, Mr. Masih insisted that he had been falsely charged as part of a plot by businessmen to use blasphemy allegations to drive Christians from the land in Joseph Colony so that it could be seized for industrial use.

Although Pakistan has never carried out an execution under its blasphemy laws, it has often taken little more than the rumor of insults to Islam to incite lynchings and other violence.

The case has once again turned a spotlight on Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which human rights groups say have been used as a weapon to settle personal scores and persecute religious minorities in the country. Many of those accused never make it to trial, and are instead killed by vigilantes.

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Source: The New York Times, March 28, 2014