A group of Pakistani women are alive and well after being sentenced to death for purportedly mingling with men and singing at a village wedding, the Supreme Court was told Thursday. A local cleric sentenced four women and two men to death after mobile phone footage emerged of them enjoying themselves at a party in the mountains of Kohistan, 175 kilometres (110 miles) north of the capital Islamabad.
The men and women had allegedly danced and sung together in Gada village, in defiance of strict tribal customs that separate men and women at weddings. From the footage itself, however, it is not clear that the men and women celebrated together. Nor are the women shown dancing, but clapping while seated. Local officials insisted the women were safe, but Supreme Court took up the case after reports surfaced that the women and one of their sisters had been killed.
"I met two women and they are alive. I was told three others are also alive. They are in their homes far away in mountainous areas. I could not go there," rights activist Farzana Bari told AFP after returning from the region. In court, attorney general Irfan Qadir said: "All the girls are alive." Justice Jawad Khawaja responded "Thank God".
Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said he was ready to send in the army unless he had a clear report on all the women. "We are even ready to provide you troops," he said. "Delay will not help the operation. Either the girls will escape or be killed."
Mohammad Afzal, a brother of one of the men in the video, has claimed the women were killed on May 30 on the orders of a cleric who led a 40 to 50-member tribal jirga. The information minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa again insisted on Thursday that all the women were alive. "The girls said they are fine. They are under no threat and they have no fear," Mian Iftikhar Hussain told reporters, quoting the human rights activist Bari.