Pakistani tells how he killed 4 daughters

The laborer, 40, says he took their lives to save his family's 'honor'

Associated Press Dec. 28, 2005

Nazir Ahmed, 40, who killed his three young daughters and their adult stepsister, is processed in police detention in Gago Mandi near Multan, Pakistan. : AP

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 some in Pakistan. The 40-year old laborer, speaking to the Associated Press in police detention as he was being shifted to prison, said he had only one regret - that he didn't kill the stepsister's alleged lover too.

Hundreds of girls and women are killed by male relatives each year in this conservative Islamic nation, and rights groups said Wednesday such "honor killings" will only stop when authorities get serious about punishing perpetrators. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that in more than half of such cases that make it to court, most end with cash settlements paid by relatives to the victims' families, although the minimum penalty is 10 years and the maximum is 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 eastern Punjab province. It is the latest of more than 260 such honor killings documented by the rights commission, mostly from media reports, during the first 11 months of 2005. Ahmed said he killed his stepdaughter because she had committed adultery, and his daughters because he didn't want them to do the same when they grew up.


Hudood Laws in Pakistan that a woman must have four male witnesses to prove rape, or face a charge of adultery herself.The most well-known among Hudood cases is that concerning a rape victim, Zafran Bibi, who last year was charged with adultery and sentenced to be stoned to death

According to Kanez Ayesha Munawwar, a member of Pakistan's National Assembly who is against the repeal of Hudood, "These laws will make our society a moral one. I think (they) give the Pakistani woman protection. If these laws are implemented with all honesty, it will actually empower her."


Italy Is Roiled by Murder of a Pakistani Woman and Other Violence Involving "Immigrants"

Extract August 23, 2006 New York Times

On Aug. 11 of Hina Saleem, a 20-year-old woman whose family moved here from Pakistan was found buried with her throat slit. Hina had been killed because her traditionalist Muslim father objected to her Western lifestyle. "She smoked and wore revealing, low-slung jeans like many young women...News reports said she had been living with an Italian man." Under Islam it's death for a Muslim woman to have relations with a non-Muslim man, married or not.

The body was found after her boyfriend reported her missing. Her father, uncle and two other men were involved, all Pakistani. "She was always happy," said Multani Gurmail, her boss at the Antica India restaurant, where she had worked as a waitress. "I knew she had some problems. I didn't realize how bad they were."

This killing along with others has opened a debate on what happens to the children of Muslim immigrants that want to be Italian, German, or American, and not Muslim like their parents want. Local Muslims and her mother claimed Islam had nothing to do with it.

Her other crimes according to her mother, "She stayed out without explanation, we never knew where she was and with whom, she was simply a daughter who did not obey," Within days a young Italian woman was found dead in a Brescia church. A Sri Lankan immigrant was arrested. On Aug. 21, a Morocco immigrant was arrested and charged with killing a notable painter, and a Pakistani man was knifed to death during what appears to have been a robbery. It hard to tell much from the news report because of the liberal stance and political correctness of the New York Times.

To continue, "According to the Catholic charity Caritas, there are about 110,000 immigrants among the 1.1 million people living in the province of Brescia. Pakistani leaders estimate there are about 10,000 people of Pakistani origin in the area...Their children, on the other hand, grew up going to Italian schools and having Italian friends. More problems were imminent...most are just becoming teenagers now."

Their problem is they fled (her parents) the misery and poverty caused by their backward Islamic-tribal culture, then want to retain that very culture in the West. In the cause of political correctness, many public officials look the other way as women and girls often live in terror.