A Pakistani court yesterday overturned the convictions of five men sentenced to death in 2002 for raping a woman on the orders of a tribal council for her brother's alleged affair, officials said. The death penalty of the sixth convict in the attack on Mukhtaran Mai, who went on to become a rights campaigner, was commuted to life imprisonment by a two-member bench of the high court in Multan. "Justice has been done," defense lawyer Mohammad Salim said.
| "For them, anyway. She certainly doesn't count." |
Mai, in her early 30s, was raped for more than an hour in the village of Meerwala in Punjab province in June 2002, as punishment for her brother's alleged affair with a woman of a powerful rival clan. The case shocked the country and sparked international outrage. Later the same year an anti-terrorist court in Punjab province sentenced six men to death by hanging and acquitted another eight defendants. Defense lawyers said Multan high court yesterday had acquitted convicts Ghulam Farid, Fayyaz Hussain, Faiz Baksh, Ramzan Bhojar and Allah Ditta Mastoi, while Abdul Khaliq was given life imprisonment. "The verdict of the anti-terrorism court in August 2002 was largely influenced by media hype and government pressure," Salim said.
| "She's still alive. What's the big deal?" |
Four of those originally sentenced to death were found guilty of participating in the rape itself. The other two were members of the tribal jury. After the rape, Mai embarked on a mission to improve girls' education in Pakistan, where 72 percent of women are illiterate, using her compensation money to set up her district's first ever school for girls. However, late last year she said that she could never forgive her attackers. "I want all of them to die," she said. Mai broke down on hearing the verdict yesterday. "I will appeal. I will go anywhere, wherever is necessary... to get my right," she told reporters. Human rights lawyer, Hina Jilani, said there should have been a retrial. "It was much more desirable to ensure that justice is done to the victim and the impunity that prevails in the country with regard to how gang rape cases are dealt with," she said.
The panchayat in Meerwala, southern Punjab, had found Ms Mai's younger brother, Shakoor, guilty of raping a girl from the village's powerful Mastoi clan. It was later revealed in a conventional court that the 12-year-old had in fact been kidnapped and sexually assaulted by the same men who later made up the jury. It was alleged that Ms Mai was then taken away to be raped in revenge for her brother's supposed crime. None of the 150 men present responded to her pleas for mercy, she said.
Ms Mai became famous after the rape for human rights work and pursuing the case through the courts, although she said she faced threats from her alleged attackers' supporters. She built two schools in her village with the $9,400 compensation money she was awarded. "Education will play a very, very important role in changing the minds of men. Without these schools, my life would be nothing," she told the BBC news website last year. "Even if I don't succeed in my struggle," she says, "I'll keep trying until my death." |