PAKISTAN RAPE VICTIM SEEKS PRESIDENT'S HELP

March 17, 2005 - (Reuters) The victim of a notorious gang rape in Pakistan appealed to the president on Thursday for the re-arrest of four men, convicted for an attack on her but later freed, until a final Supreme Court ruling on the case.

The men were released from prison in the central town of Dera Ghazi Khan on Tuesday pending a Supreme Court hearing of appeals arising from their conviction for the 2002 attack.

The victim, Mukhtaran Mai, says she fears for her life now that the four are free and she asked President Pervez Musharraf to intervene. `It is an appeal to the president to keep these men in custody until a final judgment is made by the Supreme Court,'' Mai told a news conference in Islamabad before she met Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao to discuss her case.

Mai was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional village council after her brother, who was 12 at the time, was judged to have offended the honor of a powerful clan.

The rape provoked an outcry in Pakistan and drew international attention to the plight of women in the country, particularly in rural areas.

An anti-terrorism court sentenced six men to death in July 2002 for the attack -- four for carrying out the rape and two who sat on the village council that ordered it.

But a high court in the central city of Multan overturned the anti-terrorism court's ruling on March 3 and acquitted five of the six, citing a lack of evidence.

One of the five was kept in custody in connection with another case. A sixth had his sentence commuted to life in prison.

Mai has said in the past she and members of her family have been threatened with death. She has appealed for protection and police have been posted around her house.
`My heart is broken and I have no desire to live,'' she told Reuters on Wednesday.
Gang rapes and honor killings are common in rural Pakistan, where tribal customs still hold sway. In most cases the perpetrators go free because of poor police investigations and flaws in the legal system.

Musharraf has called for stringent steps to curb crime against women, including a review of controversial Islamic laws that rights groups say are discriminatory.

But the government has failed to take significant steps in the face of stiff opposition from Islamic parties and powerful feudal politicians.

LEGAL TANGLE

Kashmala Tariq, a ruling-party national assembly member who is helping Mai, told the news conference Mai wanted the government to detain the four under a public order law.

A police inspector in Mai's village, Meerwala, told Reuters that her house was well guarded and police were watching the four released men who had to inform authorities of their movements.

``Nobody can come close to the house of Mukhtaran Mai, at least up to 100 yards, without going through a police checkpost,'' said police officer Muhammad Farooq.

The case is snarled in a legal tangle. Last Friday the Federal Shariat Court, Pakistan's highest Islamic tribunal, rejected the Multan court's judgment, saying it had no
jurisdiction to rule on the case.

The Supreme Court then intervened, suspending proceedings of both the Federal Shariat Court and Multan High Court and saying it would hear appeals and counter-appeals against the rulings.

The Supreme Court is expected to start proceedings in the next few days although a date has not been announced, Tariq said. The original trial heard that the village council had ordered Mai's rape as punishment for her brother's suspected affair with a woman from
the Mastoi tribe.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-crime-
pakistan-rape.html?