7 Rapists arrested

Pakistan police arrest seven men over alleged revenge gang rape. By AFP ...Middle East Times Published July 6, 2005 Pakistani police have arrested seven men who allegedly gang raped a married woman to avenge her relative's suspected role in the abduction of a girl, police said on Wednesday. The attack appears similar to one involving another woman, Mukhtaran Mai, who was raped on the orders of a tribal jury in 2002 and whose treatment by Pakistan authorities has caused international outrage. Police said that in the latest incident armed men abducted the 25-year-old woman from her home in the rural town of Chiniot in central Pakistan last month and allegedly raped her at gunpoint. She was recovered from a nearby village when police raided the house of a man who later claimed that she was abducted "to avenge the kidnapping of his daughter by a man in her family", said police officer Humayun Masood. The woman told a local magistrate that she was raped by eight men for two days, head of the local police station Mohammad Mumtaz said. She denied involvement of her relatives in the abduction in May of the man's 20-year-old daughter, he said. "We have arrested seven people," Masood said. Police were trying to arrest the eighth suspect, he said. Women in Pakistan are often subjected to brutal "honor punishments", such as murder, rape and being burned with acid, to pay for the alleged crimes of relatives. In June Pakistan was criticized by the United States for its handling of the Mukhtaran Mai case after it banned the 33-year-old from leaving the country to speak to human rights groups. Pakistan's Supreme Court last week ordered the rearrest of 13 men linked to her case and suspended their acquittals by lower courts