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Perv lets Mai travel 'anywhere'
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan’s president said on Wednesday that the victim in a high-profile rape case is free to go anywhere, and defended his earlier decision to ban her from traveling abroad. “Let me make it absolutely clear that Mukhtar Mai is free to go wherever she pleases, meet whomever she wants and say whatever she pleases. I have full faith in her and in her patriotism,” Gen. Pervez Musharraf said in a message on his Web site.
"Not that her life expectancy is much better than mine," he noted.
Musharraf’s message came a day after the Supreme Court ordered that 13 men who allegedly assaulted 33-year-old Mukhtar Mai be re-arrested after overturning their earlier acquittals by lower courts.

Musharraf had banned Mai from traveling to America earlier this month. During a tour in New Zealand, he said he did not want Pakistan’s bad image projected abroad. On his Web site, Musharraf defended his decision again. “I have already publicly stated that I took the decision to stop her from going to the US myself. I took this decision in the best national interest of Pakistan because I truly believed that the invitation would have tarnished Pakistan’s international image rather than help improve the lot of women folk in Pakistan or elsewhere in the world,” he said.

“I believe there was a strong ulterior intent of maligning Pakistan by vested interests, rather than sincerely helping Mai out,” he said but did not identify the “vested interests.”
Vested interests. Nefarious vested interests. Sinister, nefarious vested interests.
“While I sincerely regret what Mai had to endure, the government is taking action to remedy it,” Musharraf said
Posted by: Steve White 2005-06-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=122830