Pakistani investigators are probing whether a "serial killer" cleric who assassinated a female minister this week -- having previously confessed to four other murders -- had links to Islamist groups.
In a case that shocked even this unstable Islamic republic, extremist Mohammad Sarwar shot Punjab province social welfare minister Zilla Huma Usman in the head at a public meeting in central Gujranwala city on Tuesday.
Police have said that Sarwar objected to the involvement of women in politics and disapproved of the clothes worn by Usman, a supporter of the moderate and pro-US President Pervez Musharraf.
PHOTO: AFP
`Conviction'
"I killed her out of conviction that she was leading an un-Islamic life and spreading an evil influence on other women," he told interrogators, according to a police source.
Police say that in 2003 Sarwar had escaped justice despite publicly admitting that he had killed four prostitutes and injured another four as they waited by roadsides for clients.
"He is a serial killer," said Saud Aziz, the police chief of Gujranwala at the time of the earlier shootings.
Punjab Law Minister Raja Basharat hit out at the Pakistani justice system, saying "fanatic" Sarwar was still on the streets mainly due to "defective police investigation and poor quality of the prosecution."
"We are investigating and there is a possibility that he may have support from some religious group," he said, without elaborating or naming the organization.
Pakistan has dozens of Islamic militant outfits, most of which have been banned by Musharraf.
Prostitute murders
The prostitute murders -- three in conservative Gujranwala and one in the eastern city of Lahore between September 2002 and January 2003 -- puzzled police and caused a public outcry.
Former police inspector Mohammad Naveed finally arrested Sarwar in early 2003 on the basis of information from local religious leaders and witness reports that a cleric was spotted near the scene of the killings.
He said Sarwar's usual method of attack was to fire two or three bullets just above the crotch of his victims. One woman who survived was paralyzed.
"In no time after his arrest [in 2003] he confessed to the murders and provided all the details," Naveed said. "He was produced before the media and he made a confessional statement."
Case collapsed
Yet the case collapsed during the trial. Police said the victims' families took compensation money raised by religious leaders instead of testifying because of the shame of their daughters' "immoral" profession.
A rickshaw driver who used to drive the prostitutes around initially told police he saw Sarwar shooting one of the women, "but backed down, apparently under pressure from local clergy in Gujranwala who supported Sarwar."
Eventually Sarwar -- a father of nine who had been educated at a madrassa or Islamic seminary in Gujranwala and later taught local children the Koran -- withdrew his confession.
His lawyer, Liaqat Sindhu, said he "knew that Sarwar was guilty of the killings" but that he was acquitted because there was no firm evidence and the case was mishandled.
Psychiatric tests on Sarwar in 2003 showed that he was "not deranged," said Saud Aziz, who is now police chief of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad.
"He said he killed the girls after he got divine revelations," he said.
Society
Four years later, the murder of Zilla Huma Usman shows how extremism has corrupted Pakistani society, said Iqbal Haider, secretary general of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
"There is no writ of the government, which results in barbaric tragedies like this," said Haider, a former law minister under Benazir Bhutto, the country's first female prime minister.
"Our prosecution and our administration is shamelessly incompetent, corrupt and religiously biased," Haider said.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Cannabis-based medicines have shown little evidence of effectiveness for treating most mental health and substance-use disorders, according to a large review of past studies published in a major medical journal on Monday. Medical use of cannabinoids has been expanding, including in the US, Canada and Australia, where many patients report using cannabis products to manage conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep problems. Researchers reviewed data from 54 randomized clinical trials conducted between 1980 and May last year involving 2,477 participants for their analysis published in The Lancet. The studies assessed cannabinoids as a primary treatment for mental disorders or substance-use
NATIONWIDE BLACKOUT: US President Donald Trump cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba, strangling the Caribbean island’s already antiquated grid Cuba’s national electric grid collapsed on Monday, the nation’s grid operator said, leaving about 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the already obsolete generation system. Grid operator UNE on social media said that it is investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that this weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run nation. Officials ruled out a major power plant failure, but had still not pinpointed the root cause of the grid collapse, suggesting a problem with transmission. Officials said that
CONSERVING FUEL: State institutions are to operate only four days a week starting tomorrow, with the measures also applying to schools and universities Sri Lanka on Monday announced a shorter working week to conserve its scarce fuel reserves as it prepares for a prolonged war in the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway through which about 20 percent of global exports pass in peacetime, has been effectively closed by Iran in retaliation over the US and Israeli war against it, now in its third week. Sri Lankan Commissioner-General of Essential Services Prabath Chandrakeerthi said state institutions would operate only four days a week starting tomorrow. The new austerity measures would also apply to schools and universities, and would remain in place indefinitely. “We are
RSS