Pakistan - Blasphemy-charged girl cannot read, says Vatican.

Pakistan - Blasphemy-charged girl cannot read, says Vatican.(DT).VATICAN CITY: French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran on Saturday went to the defence of the young Pakistani girl accused of blasphemy, stressing that she “cannot read or write”. Interviewed on Radio Vatican, Tauran, who is in-charge of interfaith dialogue in the Vatican, said, “That before asserting a sacred text has been the object of scorn, it is worth checking the facts.” Rimsha, aged 11 to 16 according to different reports, is accused of burning pages from a children’s religious instruction book inscribed with verses from the holy Quran. She was arrested and remanded in custody last Thursday.
But Tauran said that Rimsha “is a girl who cannot read or write and collects garbage to live on and picked up the fragments of the book which was in the middle of the rubbish”. “The more serious and tense the situation, the more necessary it is to have dialogue,” added the cardinal, who was the late pope John Paul II’s foreign minister. He also told the daily Il Sussidiario, that he believed it “impossible in the light of the facts that the girl had tried to express her scorn for the sacred book of Islam”. The youngster reportedly has Down’s syndrome and her arrest has prompted outrage from rights groups and concern from Western governments. Rimsha had been due to appear in court on Saturday but police and her lawyer said on Friday that the hearing had been put back to August 31.The lawyer contending the case of the arrest of a young girl from Islamabad on charges of blasphemy revealed that the medical report pronounced that the girl was a minor, reported Associated Pres.
The girl, Rimsha, was arrested for allegedly burning a Noorani Quaida, a booklet used to familiarise children with Arabic as written in the Quran.
The lawyer, Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, said that the report by a medical board investigating the age and mental state of the girl determined she was between 13 and 14.
He said that this suggested that Pakistan’s juvenile court system will hear Rimsha’s case, which is generally more lenient toward defendants.
The lawyer revealed that the medical board’s report determined that her mental state did not correspond with her age. However, he said that it was “not clear whether that meant she was mentally impaired.” Read the full story here.