Junaid Hafeez was arrested in 2013 for allegedly displaying blasphemous content while a visiting university lecturer in the city of Multan. After his arrest, prosecutors claimed investigators retrieved anti-religious material from Hafeez’s laptop.

In the past six years, he’s remained in solitary confinement because he would likely be killed if kept with the general population, according to local media. Three of those years were spent in the United States under a special program for Pakistani educators.

Saturday’s trial was held inside the jail where Hafeez is being detained because of security concerns. He was also fined half a million Pakistani rupees – the equivalent of $3,200.

Defense attorney Shahbaz Gormani says his client was wrongly convicted and plans to appeal the verdict.

Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law carries an automatic death penalty for anyone accused of insulting God, Islam or other religious figures.

While authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy, even the mere accusation can cause riots. Domestic and international human rights groups say blasphemy allegations have often been used to intimidate religious minorities and to settle personal scores.

A Punjab governor was killed by his own guard in 2011 after he defended a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, who was accused of blasphemy.

Bibi was acquitted in January after eight years on death row in a case that drew international media attention. Faced with death threats from Islamic extremists upon her release, she flew to Canada to join her daughters in May.

Recall that MURIC had described the abduction of nine Muslim children in Kano and their alleged conversion to Christianity as kidnapping for Christ, Daily Post reports.

Northern CAN, in its reaction, described MURIC’s statement as ‘reckless, irresponsible, derogatory and provocative utterances.’

However, in a statement signed by the group’s director, Professor Ishaq Akintola on Monday, MURIC maintained its earlier position on the matter, insisting that CAN should put its house in order.

The statement reads, “There is incontrovertible evidence that Muslim children have been kidnapped, converted to Christianity and sold into slavery. It is not the Kano 9 alone.

“There are others. There is also indubitable evidence to prove that it did not start yesterday. What is Northern CAN trying to tell us? They are chasing shadows.

“In our statement last Monday, we separated good Christians from bad ones. We also made it clear that we have both the good and the bad among Muslims too. Here are our exact words: ‘We are aware that not all Christians are involved in this criminal behavior.

“Many adherents of Christianity are decent and peace-loving. Such Christians will never descend so low as to seize, convert and sell Muslim children.

“Instead of joining hands with us to condemn the bad ones among us, Northern CAN is seeking to silence us. That is a tall dream. We advise Northern CAN to put its house in order and stop blaming MURIC.

“Afterall, we did not mention anything about kidnapping for Christ until the issue of Kano 9 occurred and the revelation has exposed other similar cases.

“We advise Northern CAN to launch a campaign of love and harmony in the churches. There is an urgent need to deradicalise Christian elements particularly in the Middle Belt region where Muslims are being killed and dumped inside mysterious ponds and narrow wells.

“The same advocacy should be taken to South Eastern Nigeria from where syndicates sponsor sleeper cells to Northern Nigeria to abduct, convert and sell Muslim children into slavery.

“Enough of denials and sentimentalities. Northern CAN should stop defending the indefensible. Its current body language is not remorseful. Your fellow Christians kidnapped Muslim children and converted them to Christianity.

“The Muslims complain but instead of consoling them and checking your members you are firing at the victims from all cylinders. We know you very well. This has always been your style. You never own up.

“We warn that Northern CAN should not drag Nigerian Christians into a controversy that involves only those who are in the dirty business of kidnapping Muslim children for conversion to Christianity.

“We hold Jesus (peace be upon him) in very high esteem and our statement was not intended to malign him. No true Muslim will do that.

“Extremist Christians can kidnap Muslims for Christ. That does not mean that Christ is involved. In fact Christ did not send them. They are only being more Christian than Christ himself.

“Jesus never taught men to be wicked. He taught love, kindness and righteousness. It is highly mischievous of Northern CAN to attempt to whip up sentiments over mere semantics.

“We find it difficult to believe CAN’s words, ‘No Christian has associated Muslims with such criminal acts. We only cry for our own who are victims’. Really?

“This is a false claim and Nigerians know better. What of all the allegations against us in the early days of Boko Haram attacks on churches?

“On a last note, we invite Northern CAN to put its house in order and join hands with the authorities in fishing out remaining sleeper cells for the kidnapping and conversion of Muslim children to Christianity.

“We can all coexist peacefully but we must first eschew parochialism and address issues objectively. We can change this atmosphere of mutual suspicion if only we can be sincere with ourselves.”

The attacker set off the explosives among the roughly 1,200 guests at the event at the Dubai City wedding hall in Kabul, Nusrat Rahimi, a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, told The Associated Press. An affiliate group of the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

“There are so many dead and wounded,” survivor Ahmad Omid said. “I was with the groom in the other room when we heard the blast and then I couldn’t find anyone. Everyone was lying all around the hall.”

The blast, which left 182 people severely injured, occurred in a western Kabul neighborhood that’s home to many of the country’s minority Shiite Hazara community, was the deadliest attack in Kabul this year.

A local affiliate of ISIS in Afghanistan wrote on an ISIS-linked website on Sunday that a Pakistani-ISIS fighter seeking martyrdom was responsible for the suicide bombing, and claimed a car bomb was also detonated in the attack.

The bombing broke a period of relative calm in Afghanistan’s capital city, after 14 people were killed and another 145 were wounded — most of them women, children and other civilians — on Aug. 7 when a Taliban car bomb aimed at Afghan security forces detonated explosives.

Kabul’s huge, brightly lit wedding halls are centers of community life in a city weary of decades of war, with thousands of dollars spent on a single evening.

Such wedding halls also serve as meeting places and, in November, at least 55 people were killed when a suicide bomber sneaked into a Kabul wedding hall where hundreds of Muslim religious scholars and clerics had gathered to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Taliban denied involvement in that attack, and IS did not claim responsibility.