REUTERS – Pakistan’s largest media group said on Wednesday it will appeal against a 26-year jail term for its owner for blasphemy, the latest twist in a long-running feud between the station and the military.

A court sentenced Mir Shakeel-ur-Rehman, owner of Geo News, on Tuesday over a broadcast showing people dancing to a song about the wedding of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad’s daughter.

The channel faced a slew of blasphemy complaints about the show, provoking accusations that the country’s punitive blasphemy law was being used to silence critics of the military.

The charges were brought soon after the station publicly blamed the shooting of one of their top journalists on the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency. The army denied the accusations.

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