A woman who drew international attention after being gang-raped in Pakistan in a retaliatory "honor" attack said yesterday she is fearful after several of the alleged perpetrators were ordered released from prison.
Mukhtar Mai's story broke in June 2002 after she was raped by four men on the orders of a village council that wanted to punish her family.
The assault was ordered after Mai's brother allegedly had sex with a woman from a more prominent family.
Mai's story captured global attention and prompted Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf to order the arrest of the culprits.
death sentence
Within days six men were behind bars, and a judge sentenced them to death after finding them guilty.
On Thursday, however, an appeal court in Multan in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province ordered the release of five of the men because of a lack of evidence. The other had his death sentence reduced to life in prison.
While the five have yet to be released, Mai said she won't be safe in her village of Meerwala -- 565km southwest of the capital, Islamabad -- where the crime took place.
"I fear that those who were awarded death sentences can take any step after their re-lease," a tearful Mai said, urging the government to provide her protection.
appeal
Mai, a 33-year-old schoolteacher, said she would not leave her village and vowed to appeal the court's decision.
"I will fight a legal battle to death. I want all those people who molested me hanged," she said.
Mai is from the Gujar clan, while the attackers were from a clan considered socially higher, called Mastoi.
She denied her 13-year-old brother Abdul Shakoor had relations with the Mastoi woman, saying the clan fabricated the story to cover up another incident, in which her brother was allegedly sexually assaulted by Mastoi men.
unforgettable
Mai said she cannot forget what happened on June 22, 2002, when they came to her house and accused Shakoor. Hours later, a village council summoned her father.
"I was worried about my brother, so I went there to see the proceedings," she said.
"My father was defending Shakoor when a man caught me and started taking me to a house. I cried and asked for help. Some armed men caught my father. Later, four men took turns to rape me, and then threw me out of that house," she said.
She said she would never forgive the people who saw her being dragged away, but did nothing to help.
"I heard laughter, and weeping there helplessly was only one man -- my father," she said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS