30 June 2005 :

Pakistan's highest court delivered a legal victory to Mukhtaran Bibi, a woman who accused 13 men of orchestrating her gang rape three years previously. The supreme court overturned the acquittals of some of the men and ordered all of them to be rearrested. Jubilant women crowded around Mukhtaran, 31, after judges issued warrants for the men pending a final hearing of the case.  Six men, four alleged rapists and two village elders, had been sentenced to death in the original trial in July 2002, which heard how a village court ordered Ms Mukhtaran to be raped as punishment for her 12-year-old brother's alleged illicit sexual affair. But a provincial court acquitted five of the men in March, citing flaws in the evidence against them, and a sixth had his sentenced commuted to life imprisonment. Now the supreme court suspended that ruling and issued arrest warrants for another eight men, the jurors of the village court, who could also face death by hanging. "The court will re-evaluate the evidence and testimonies and come to a decision. We feel confident it will be in our favour," said Aitzaz Ahsan, Ms Mukhtaran's lawyer. Ms Mukhtaran's battle for justice had sparked political controversy in Pakistan and intense interest abroad. Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, tried to stop Ms Mukhtaran from travelling to a human rights conference in the US a week previously to prevent her criticising the country. Gen Musharraf was forced to rescind the ban after intense media criticism and under pressure from the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.