Pregnant Pakistani woman stoned to death by family

[Kitsune]

I was looking to see if I am getting an e-mail bounce on the yahoo groups and went through to this


http://news.yahoo.com/pregnant-pakistan ... 43284.html

Pregnant Pakistani woman stoned to death by family
LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — A pregnant woman was stoned to death Tuesday by her own family outside a courthouse in the Pakistani city of Lahore for marrying the man she loved.

The woman was killed while on her way to court to contest an abduction case her family had filed against her husband. Her father was promptly arrested on murder charges, police investigator Rana Mujahid said, adding that police were working to apprehend all those who participated in this "heinous crime."

Arranged marriages are the norm among conservative Pakistanis, and hundreds of women are murdered every year in so-called honor killings carried out by husbands or relatives as a punishment for alleged adultery or other illicit sexual behavior.

Stonings in public settings, however, are extremely rare. Tuesday's attack took place in front of a crowd of onlookers in broad daylight. The courthouse is located on a main downtown thoroughfare.

A police officer, Naseem Butt, identified the slain woman as Farzana Parveen, 25, and said she had married Mohammad Iqbal, 45, against her family's wishes after being engaged to him for years.

Her father, Mohammad Azeem, had filed an abduction case against Iqbal, which the couple was contesting, said her lawyer, Mustafa Kharal. He said she was three months pregnant.

Nearly 20 members of Parveen's extended family, including her father and brothers, had waited outside the building that houses the high court of Lahore. As the couple walked up to the main gate, the relatives fired shots in the air and tried to snatch her from Iqbal, her lawyer said.

When she resisted, her father, brothers and other relatives started beating her, eventually pelting her with bricks from a nearby construction site, according to Mujahid and Iqbal, the slain woman's husband.
View gallery
Mohammad Iqbal, right, husband of Farzana Parveen, …
Mohammad Iqbal, right, husband of Farzana Parveen, 25, sits in an ambulance next to the body of his …

Iqbal said he started seeing Parveen after the death of his first wife, with whom he had five children.

"We were in love," he told The Associated Press. He alleged that the woman's family wanted to fleece money from him before marrying her off.

"I simply took her to court and registered a marriage," infuriating the family, he said.

Parveen's father surrendered after the attack and called his daughter's murder an "honor killing," Butt said.

"I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it," Mujahid, the police investigator, quoted the father as saying.

Mujahid said the woman's body was handed over to her husband for burial.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private group, said in a report last month that some 869 women were murdered in honor killings in 2013.

But even Pakistanis who have tracked violence against women expressed shock at the brutal and public nature of Tuesday's slaying.

"I have not heard of any such case in which a woman was stoned to death, and the most shameful and worrying thing is that this woman was killed outside a courthouse," said Zia Awan, a prominent lawyer and human rights activist.

He said Pakistanis who commit violence against women are often acquitted or handed light sentences because of poor police work and faulty prosecutions.

"Either the family does not pursue such cases or police don't properly investigate. As a result, the courts either award light sentences to the attackers, or they are acquitted," he said.

____

Associated Press Writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.

[Sea Skimmer]

The country isn't having a civil war for nothing.

[Sidewinder]

He said Pakistanis who commit violence against women are often acquitted or handed light sentences because of poor police work and faulty prosecutions.

"Either the family does not pursue such cases or police don't properly investigate. As a result, the courts either award light sentences to the attackers, or they are acquitted," he said.

Hopefully, the woman's husband will file suit, and convince the courts to punish the murderers for their crime, specifically, MURDER.

[Guardsman Bass]

Namus at work again. That cultural norm is problematic in most of the Middle East and parts of central and southern Asia, but Pakistan especially has it bad.

[mr friendly guy]

According to an alleged confession, the victim's husband killed his first wife. This situation turns out to be more fucked up.

http://www.news.com.au/world/stoning-vi ... 6936627465

Stoning victim Farzana Parveen’s husband Mohammad Iqbal ‘admits strangling his first wife to death’

PAKISTAN’S prime minister has demanded “immediate action” over the stoning death of a pregnant woman outside a courthouse, as her husband revealed in a grisly twist that he strangled his first wife.
Farzana Parveen was murdered on Tuesday outside the High Court in the eastern city of Lahore by more than two dozen brick-wielding attackers, including her brother and father, for marrying against her family’s wishes - while police stood by.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT STONINGS AND HONOUR KILLINGS
The brazen, brutal nature of the killing, in broad daylight in the centre of Pakistan’s second largest city, has triggered outrage around the world.
The attack also casts a spotlight on the country’s controversial blood-money laws which allow relatives of homicide victims to forgive their perpetrators - who in cases such as this are often also family members.

In a startling twist, Parveen’s husband Mohammad Iqbal, 45, admitted on Thursday that he had killed his first wife - and was spared prison because he was forgiven for the act by his son.
“I was in love with Farzana and killed my first wife because of this love,” Iqbal told AFP, adding that he had strangled her.
After admitting to the murder he switched off his phone and did not respond to further calls.
Zulfiqar Hameed, a senior police officer investigating the killing of Parveen, said police would be filing a report to the government detailing Iqbal’s past.
“Iqbal was a notorious character and he had murdered his first wife six years ago,” Mr Hameed said.
“He was arrested and later released after a compromise with his family.”
Hundreds of women are murdered by relatives in Pakistan each year supposedly to defend family “honour”, but the fact that police officers guarding the court apparently did nothing to intervene to save 25-year-old Parveen has added to the outrage over the killing.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has told the Punjab chief minister, his brother Shahbaz Sharif, to act over the “brutal killing of lady in the premises of high court in the presence of police”, a statement from his office said on Thursday.
Parveen, who was three months pregnant, had gone to court to testify in Iqbal’s defence after he was accused by her relatives of kidnapping her and forcing her into marriage.
Iqbal, a farmer, said Parveen’s family had initially agreed to their marriage but later changed their mind after he did not pay them a big enough dowry.
And he shed further light on Parveen’s horrifying last moments.
“Five to six people were hitting her in the head, she was shouting for help, she was screaming but they killed my helpless wife,” he said. “We were in love.”