Lahore
(Pakistan) (AFP) - A Pakistan court on Wednesday sentenced four men to death
for bludgeoning to death a pregnant woman in the centre of the country's
second-largest city for marrying against her family's wishes.
A mob of
more than two dozen attackers, among them numerous relatives including the
victim's father and brother, battered Farzana Parveen to death with bricks
outside the High Court in the eastern city of Lahore in May.
So-called
"honour" killings are commonplace in Pakistan but the brutal and
brazen nature of the attack on 25-year-old Parveen meant the case made
headlines around the world.
"The
court today awarded death sentences to four accused -- the father, brother,
cousin and ex-husband of the victim -- for murder and terrorism,"
prosecutor Rai Asif Mehmood told AFP.
Mehmood
said the sentences were handed down for three counts -- murder, terrorism and
the killing of an unborn baby -- and the court had also fined each defendant
100,000 rupees ($1,000).
The fifth
accused in the case, a cousin of Parveen, was sentenced to 13 years'
imprisonment, Mehmood said.
Though
Pakistan has the death penalty for several crimes, there has been a de facto
moratorium on civilian executions since 2008.
Defence
lawyer Mansoor Rehman Afridi said his clients would appeal.
"My
clients will appeal against their sentences as we believe that the case had
been politicised and the media coverage mounted pressure on us," Afridi
told AFP.
The killing
sparked outrage, with the United States branding the incident
"heinous" and Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif demanding action
to catch the killers.
Hundreds of
women are murdered by their relatives in Pakistan each year on the grounds of
defending family "honour".
The Aurat
Foundation, a campaign group that works to improve the lives of women in
Pakistan's conservative and patriarchal society, says more than 3,000 have been
killed in such attacks since 2008.
But
Pakistan's blood-money laws allow a victim's family to forgive the murderer on
receipt of a payment, which makes prosecuting so-called "honour"
cases difficult because the killer is usually a relative.
Parveen's
killing, in broad daylight in a supposedly relatively liberal city, caused
particular outrage as police were present at the scene but apparently did
nothing to stop the attack.
Senior
officers defended their men, saying the mob was too large to be stopped and
trying to play down the killing as a "routine murder".
In a grisly
twist to the case, a few days after Parveen's death her husband Mohammad Iqbal
admitted he had strangled his first wife out of love for Parveen.
He was
spared jail for his first wife's murder because his sons persuaded her family
to pardon him under the blood-money laws.
On the day
she was attacked Parveen 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.
 |
Mohammad
Iqbal said he had killed his first wife in order to be able to
marry his
second, Farzana Parveen. Photograph: Rahat Dar/EPA
|
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