When Aasiya Noreen, also known as Asia Bibi, was acquitted last month by the judges of Pakistan’s highest court of charges of blasphemy, some saw the judgment as a harbinger of hope. As a columnist in The Guardian wrote: “A small step towards a more open Pakistan.”

Far from it: the judges ordered that Noreen, a poor Catholic farm labourer, who had spent eight years on death row, be released immediately; but prime minister Imran Khan’s government struck a deal with Muslim extremists who threatened to bring Pakistan to a bloody halt with their demands that Noreen be put to death, whatever the courts and the judges had decided. The government put her on a watch-list to stop her leaving the country, and allowed a review petition questioning the court’s acquittal verdict to go ahead.