Multan, Pakistan - A Pakistani woman gang-raped by four men on the orders of a traditional village jury said on Sunday she was satisfied with the death sentences handed down to six of the men involved in the rape and in the jury decision.
A special anti-terrorism court in the town of Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab province sentenced four rapists and two of the village jurors to hang for the June 22 attack on divorcee Mukhtaran Mai, 30. Eight other men who had sat on the village jury were released.
Mai, who says her family have received death threats, was not in court when the judge gave his decision shortly after midnight. She was given the news at dawn on Sunday by a relative in her home village, Meerawali.
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"God has provided justice to me," she said. "If courts begin giving decisions like this, I am sure rapes will be reduced, if not stopped. I am satisfied with the decision."
'God has provided justice to me' Mai was raped by four men after asking a traditional jury to settle a dispute with the more powerful Mastoi clan.
Mai said she went to the jury after her 12-year-old brother, Abdul Shakoor, was kidnapped and sodomised by members of the Mastoi family as a punishment for an illicit affair with one of their female relatives.
The jury ruled that to save Mastoi honour, Shakoor should marry the woman with whom he was linked while Mai was to be given in marriage to a Mastoi man. When Mai rejected the decision, she was gang-raped and made to walk home nearly naked in front of hundreds of people.
Police sent armed men to Meerawali and cordoned off Mai's house to prevent a revenge attack. Mai said her family had been threatened with revenge if the men were convicted.
Lawyers for the convicted men have said they are to appeal. - Reuters
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