PARIS: Aasia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman who was jailed after a 2010 conviction of blasphemy, said on Monday that she was seeking political asylum in France.

“My great desire is to live in France,” Bibi said in an interview with RTL radio, her first trip to the country since fleeing with her family to Canada in 2018.

“France is the country from where I received my new life... Anne-Isabelle is an angel for me,” she said, referring to the French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet, who waged a long campaign for her release.

On Tuesday, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo is to bestow an honorary citizenship certificate granted to Bibi by the city in 2014.

She said she did not have any meeting scheduled with President Emmanuel Macron, but “obviously I would like the president to hear my request”.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2020