Pakistani investigators are probing whether a "serial killer" cleric who assassinated a female minister this week -- having previously confessed to four other murders -- had links to Islamist groups.
In a case that shocked even this unstable Islamic republic, extremist Mohammad Sarwar shot Punjab province social welfare minister Zilla Huma Usman in the head at a public meeting in central Gujranwala city on Tuesday.
Police have said that Sarwar objected to the involvement of women in politics and disapproved of the clothes worn by Usman, a supporter of the moderate and pro-US President Pervez Musharraf.
PHOTO: AFP
`Conviction'
"I killed her out of conviction that she was leading an un-Islamic life and spreading an evil influence on other women," he told interrogators, according to a police source.
Police say that in 2003 Sarwar had escaped justice despite publicly admitting that he had killed four prostitutes and injured another four as they waited by roadsides for clients.
"He is a serial killer," said Saud Aziz, the police chief of Gujranwala at the time of the earlier shootings.
Punjab Law Minister Raja Basharat hit out at the Pakistani justice system, saying "fanatic" Sarwar was still on the streets mainly due to "defective police investigation and poor quality of the prosecution."
"We are investigating and there is a possibility that he may have support from some religious group," he said, without elaborating or naming the organization.
Pakistan has dozens of Islamic militant outfits, most of which have been banned by Musharraf.
Prostitute murders
The prostitute murders -- three in conservative Gujranwala and one in the eastern city of Lahore between September 2002 and January 2003 -- puzzled police and caused a public outcry.
Former police inspector Mohammad Naveed finally arrested Sarwar in early 2003 on the basis of information from local religious leaders and witness reports that a cleric was spotted near the scene of the killings.
He said Sarwar's usual method of attack was to fire two or three bullets just above the crotch of his victims. One woman who survived was paralyzed.
"In no time after his arrest [in 2003] he confessed to the murders and provided all the details," Naveed said. "He was produced before the media and he made a confessional statement."
Case collapsed
Yet the case collapsed during the trial. Police said the victims' families took compensation money raised by religious leaders instead of testifying because of the shame of their daughters' "immoral" profession.
A rickshaw driver who used to drive the prostitutes around initially told police he saw Sarwar shooting one of the women, "but backed down, apparently under pressure from local clergy in Gujranwala who supported Sarwar."
Eventually Sarwar -- a father of nine who had been educated at a madrassa or Islamic seminary in Gujranwala and later taught local children the Koran -- withdrew his confession.
His lawyer, Liaqat Sindhu, said he "knew that Sarwar was guilty of the killings" but that he was acquitted because there was no firm evidence and the case was mishandled.
Psychiatric tests on Sarwar in 2003 showed that he was "not deranged," said Saud Aziz, who is now police chief of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad.
"He said he killed the girls after he got divine revelations," he said.
Society
Four years later, the murder of Zilla Huma Usman shows how extremism has corrupted Pakistani society, said Iqbal Haider, secretary general of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
"There is no writ of the government, which results in barbaric tragedies like this," said Haider, a former law minister under Benazir Bhutto, the country's first female prime minister.
"Our prosecution and our administration is shamelessly incompetent, corrupt and religiously biased," Haider said.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
ROYAL TARGET: After Prince Andrew lost much of his income due to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he became vulnerable to foreign agents, an author said British lawmakers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting Britain’s Prince Andrew, a former attorney general has said. Dominic Grieve, a former lawmaker who chaired the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were advised five years ago to introduce laws to criminalize foreign agents, but failed to do so. Similar laws exist in the US and Australia. “We remain without an important weapon in our armory,” Grieve said. “We asked for [this law] in the context of the Russia inquiry report” — which accused the government
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but
RSS