Gender: Female
Perpetrator: Pakistan
Religion or Belief: Christian – Unspecified/Other
Date of Detainment: July/26/2026
Current Status: Not Released
Most Recent Type of Abuse: Forced Renunciation of Faith
Maria Shahbaz
Extra Bio Info:
Maria Shahbaz was subjected to forced renunciation of faith.
On July 26, 2025,13-year-old Shahbaz was abducted by a 30-year-old man near her home, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to her abductor. Police in Lahore delayed the filing of the family's first information report (FIR) and influenced the judge to dismiss their abduction complaint.
On July 31, 2025, the Model Town court of Judicial Magistrate Hassan Sarfaraz Cheema awarded custody of Shahbaz to her captor after accepting falsified documents claiming she was 18 years old.
In March 2026, the Federal Constitutional Court upheld the decision.
Gender: Male
Perpetrator: Pakistan
Religion or Belief: Muslim – Unspecified/Other
Current Status: Not Released
Most Recent Type of Abuse: Detainment
Amir Shehzad
Extra Bio Info:
Amir Shehzad is detained for his religious expression.
In November 2024, four plainclothes officers from the Cyber Crime Wing of the Federal Investigation Agency in Pakistan detained Shehzad for making posts on Facebook deemed blasphemous.
Gender: Male
Perpetrator: Egypt
Religion or Belief: Atheist
Current Status: Not Released
Most Recent Type of Abuse: Detainment
Sherif Gaber
Extra Bio Info:
Sherif Gaber is detained for his online expression about religion.
In November 2025, Egyptian authorities arrested Gaber, a well-known atheist and online proponent of secularism, amid larger crackdowns on atheists in Egypt.
Before this case, authorities had arrested Gaber in 2013, 2015, and 2018 for expressing his views about religion, charged him with blasphemy, and sentenced him to prison.