Pakistan has witnessed the killing of many innocent women so as to protect the honor of the family. Most of the perpetrators are never persecuted. In the year 2013, a family in Pakistan received death threats among other threats from a man who is a resident of the United States of America. At one point, the family’s car was shot at although nobody was injured with the now 62 year old man posing more threats to the Pakistani family. A few days after the incidence, the head of the family, Asghar Abbas together with her 21 year old daughter, Madiha Abbas were shot dead with the brother of the 62 year old Choudhry being one of the assailants. All this started when Choudhry’s daughter returned home to the United States from a forced marriage in Pakistan which had been organized by her own father. After she ran away from the marriage and went back home with the man she loved this is when his father became irate. Amina Ajmal was helped by the State Department to go back home with Shujat Abbas whose family have been facing threats. Choudhry is reported to have told the Abbas’s family that if Amina was not going to return home, he would kill Shujat or the five members of the family. He also told his daughter that living and getting humiliated was not the kind of life and was not an option for him as his honor was at stake just because her daughter refused to stay in the arranged marriage. If you click on the link to watch cnbc live after the killing of the two family members, the rest fearing for their lives left for the states.
Despite it being known and confessed by the witnesses that they had seen several gunmen that included Choudhry’s brother holding guns and disrespecting the two bodies, no one was ever persecuted nor arrested in Gujrat, Punjab province. After the incidence Mohammad Choudhry was arrested for conspiring to commit murder despite the fact that he was in the United States. He was convicted for making threats to an innocent family as well as for conspiring to commit murder more than 13,000 kilometers away from his home and also for immigration fraud. Now he will have to spend the rest of his life in jail after the verdict was announced by the ATC-II Multan Judge Sajjad Ahmed Sheikh in the US federal court in Brooklyn after Judge William Kuntz sentenced him. The telephone conversations that he had especially with his daughter were very important during the trial. He posed threats not only to the Abbas’s family, but also through her daughter who avoided contact with him. In the trial that lasted for nine days, the state was represented by Ashfaq Ahmed Malik the Deputy Prosecutor General. Choudhry said that he was deeply sorry for his involvement in the murders while his lawyer, Ying Stafford said that they were going to appeal the conviction as he was not in good health. More about this can be found here.
