Man slit throats of daughters to save family’s ‘honour’

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 “honour” - a crime that shocked Pakistan.

The 40-year old labourer, speaking to The Associated Press in police detention, confessed to just one regret - that he didn’t murder the stepsister’s alleged lover too.

Hundreds of girls and women are murdered by male relatives each year in this conservative Islamic nation, and rights groups said such “honour killings” will only stop when authorities get serious about punishing perpetrators.

The independent 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 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 last Friday night at their home in the cotton-growing village of Gago Mandi in the eastern Punjab province.

It is the latest of more than 260 such honour killings documented by the rights commission during the first 11 months of 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 was shivering with fear. I did not know how to save my daughters,” Bibi, sobbing, told AP 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 to AP, Ahmed showed no contrition. Appearing dishevelled 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 honour.”

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 have said they 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.

“Women are treated as property and those committing crimes against them do not get punished,” said the rights commission’s director, Kamla Hyat. “The steps taken by our government have made no real difference.”