Gang rape trial hears sodomy charge

The victim of the alleged gang rape (l) and her mother

By Frances Harrison BBC correspondent in Islamabad

The brother of the woman in southern Pakistan allegedly gang-raped on the orders of a tribal council has told the court he too was raped on the same day.

The boy, who is 12 years old, told an anti-terrorism court in the southern Punjab city of Dera Ghazi Khan that he was sodomised by a group of men in June.

He said his rapists then tried to cover up their crime by falsely accusing him of having an illicit affair with a woman from their more powerful tribe.

A self-appointed village council ordered his sister to be gang-raped as punishment in a case that has drawn condemnation both abroad and in Pakistan.

Fourteen men are on trial for their part in raping the woman or abetting the rape.

Outrage

So far the focus of public outrage has been on the plight of the woman.

Clan influence remains high in rural Pakistan

She has yet to give evidence, but the testimony of her brother was just as shocking.

He told the court he was asleep outside his house, when three men abducted him and gang-raped him in a sugar cane field.

He said they asked him if he would keep their crime secret, and when he said no, they beat him and locked him in a room of a nearby house.

Confined in the same room was an older woman of the same tribe as the rapists.

He said his rapists falsely accused him of being caught in a compromising position with the woman from their tribe, to cover up the fact that they had sodomised him.

Informal court

It was that allegation of an illicit affair with a woman of the higher status tribe which prompted the informal village court to sit.

In the presence of hundreds of people the men on the self-appointed jury decreed that the woman should be raped for her brother's supposed crime.

Four men carried out the sentence of rape and then forced her to walk home naked in full public view afterwards.

The case attracted huge publicity and shocked Pakistani society.

Such was its impact that President Pervez Musharraf awarded the victim compensation money, which she said she would use to found a school for girls in the village.

But her brother's equally horrific case has yet to receive as much attention.