http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/world/13504289.htm
Posted on Thu, Dec. 29, 2005
Honor demanded he kill daughters, Pakistani man says
Hundreds of such cases reported each year
BY KHALID TANVEER
Associated Press
MULTAN, Pakistan -Nazir Ahmed appears calm and unrepentant as he
recounts how he slit the throats of his three young daughters and
their 25-year-old stepsister to salvage his family's "honor" — a crime
that shocked Pakistan.
The 40-year old laborer, interviewed as he was being moved to prison,
confessed to just one regret — that he didn't murder the stepsister's
alleged lover, too.
Hundreds of girls and women are murdered by the men of their families
each year in this Islamic nation. Rights groups said Wednesday that
such honor killings will only stop when authorities punish
perpetrators.
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that in more
than half of cases that make it to court, most end with cash
settlements paid by relatives to the victims' families, although under
a law passed last year, the minimum penalty is 10 years, the maximum
death by hanging.
Ahmed's killing spree — witnessed by his wife, Rehmat Bibi, as she
cradled their 3-month-old baby son — happened Friday night at their
home in the cotton-growing village of Gago Mandi in eastern Punjab
province.
It is the latest of more than 260 such honor killings documented by
the rights commission, mostly from media reports, during 2005.
Bibi recounted how she was woken by a shriek as Ahmed put his hand to
the mouth of his stepdaughter Muqadas and cut her throat with a
machete. Bibi looked helplessly on from the corner of the room as he
then killed the three girls — Bano, 8; Sumaira, 7; and Humaira, 4 —
pausing between the slayings to brandish the bloodstained knife at his
wife, warning her not to intervene or raise alarm.
"I did not know how to save my daughters," Bibi, sobbing, said by
phone from the village. "I begged my husband to spare my daughters but
he said, 'If you make a noise, I will kill you."'
"The whole night the bodies of my daughters lay in front of me," she
said. The next morning, Ahmed was arrested.
Speaking in the back of a police pickup truck late Tuesday as he was
shifted to a prison in the city of Multan, Ahmed showed no contrition.
Appearing disheveled but composed, he said he killed Muqadas because
she had committed adultery, and his daughters because he didn't want
them to do the same when they grew up.
He said he bought a butcher's knife and a machete after midday prayers
on Friday and hid them in the house, where he carried out the
killings.
"I thought the younger girls would do what their eldest sister had
done, so they should be eliminated," he said, his hands cuffed, his
face unshaven. "We are poor people and we have nothing else to protect
but our honor."
Despite Ahmed's contention that Muqadas had committed adultery — a
claim made by her husband — the rights commission reported that
according to local people, Muqadas had fled her husband because he had
abused her and forced her to work in a brick-making factory.
Police do not know the identity or whereabouts of Muqadas' alleged
lover.
Muqadas was Bibi's daughter by her first marriage to Ahmed's brother,
who died 14 years ago. Ahmed married his brother's widow, as is
customary under Islamic tradition.
Activists say police are reluctant to prosecute, regarding such crimes
as family disputes.
Statistics on honor killings are imprecise, but figures from the
rights commission's Web site show a marked reduction in cases this
year: 267 in the first 11 months of 2005, compared with 579 during all
of 2004. The Ministry of Women's Development said it had no reliable
figures.
Police in Multan said they would complete their investigation into
Ahmed's case in the next two weeks and that he faces the death
sentence if he is convicted.