Pakistan Court Gets Rape Plea

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan —  A woman who was gang-raped on orders of a tribal council urged that the nation’s highest court reinstate the death penalty against five of her attackers as the panel opened a hearing on the case Monday.

Mukhtaran Mai, 33, was assaulted in 2002 after her 12-year-old brother was accused of having an affair with a woman from a powerful clan. Mai spoke out about her ordeal, provoking an international outcry about the treatment of women in rural Pakistan, many parts of which are still under the sway of feudal and tribal laws.

Mai appeared relaxed as she arrived for the hearing Monday from her home in the village of Meerwala, about 350 miles southwest of Islamabad, the capital. Dozens of rights activists gathered in a show of support, along with diplomats.

She told reporters outside the courtroom that she expected the nation’s Supreme Court to uphold the original verdict in the case. The three-judge panel for the most part discussed procedural issues, and was to continue the proceedings today.

In 2002, a lower court sentenced to death six men accused of raping Mai, while acquitting eight others. The decision was followed by a back-and-forth legal battle between various Pakistani courts.

In March of this year, the Lahore High Court overturned the convictions of five of the men, and reduced the death sentence of the sixth to life in prison, citing lack of evidence.

Amid strong criticism from rights groups, Pakistan’s highest Islamic court stepped in to suspend the High Court’s judgment, reinstating the convictions of the five men. The Lahore court again ordered the men to be freed on June 10, but the authorities refused and the accused remained behind bars.

The Supreme Court finally stepped in to declare the Islamic court’s ruling unconstitutional, and decided to hear the appeal itself.

Pakistani Atty. Gen. Makhdoom Ali Khan argued before the Supreme Court in his preliminary remarks that in rape cases the statement of the victim is considered sufficient to convict the rapists.

“The [Lahore] High Court judgment was based on pure conjecture,” he pleaded before the court. “The corroborated evidence was ignored.”

Aitzaz Ahsan, a lawyer for Mai, said his client hoped the court also would reverse the acquittals of the eight other defendants in the case, Associated Press reported.

Mai has faced government restrictions as she has pursued her legal case. This month, she was put under house arrest and barred by the government from traveling to the United States, where she had been invited by a human rights organization to speak on the plight of women in Pakistan.

The government, saying it was acting in the interests of her security, banned her from overseas travel and confiscated her passport.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said he personally ordered the travel ban because foreign groups wanted her to “bad-mouth Pakistan” over the “terrible state” of the nation’s women. He said it was an unfair perception of the country.

The ban drew a rebuke from Washington. A U.S. State Department spokesman said last week that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised the matter of Mai’s freedom to travel with visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri.

On Monday, Mai told reporters that her passport had been returned to her the previous day but that she had no immediate plans to travel to the U.S. because she wanted to see her appeal finished first.

“My hopes lie with the Supreme Court,” she said, adding, “I want my rapists to get exemplary punishment so that no one in the future could think about committing such a crime against women.”