Kohistan video case: Relatives of three slain brothers stage protest

Afzal Khan, another brother, who was the killers’ target, demands justice.

ISLAMABAD:

The family of three brothers killed in Kohistan protested in front of the National Press Club in Islamabad on Tuesday, seeking justice for its slain family members.

On January 3,  three of Afzal Khan’s brothers were murdered in Kohistan. Their crime: they were related to the two men who appeared in a 2010 video dancing as five women and clapped at a wedding ceremony.

The Kohistan video, which led to death sentences from the local jirga for the men and women seen in the video, became national news in 2012 after rumors spread that the women had been killed by their families. Khan, who is the brother of the men in the video, spoke about it to the media, following which the SC took a suo motu notice of the alleged murders.

Khan and his relatives still claim that the girls were murdered after the video was circulated. But an investigation team, comprised of human rights activists, sent to Kohistan by the Supreme Court in 2012, returned with the news that at least some of the girls were alive. The case was closed thereafter. The two men in the video were on the run.

In the first week of the New Year, Khan’s family found themselves at the receiving end of tribal vengeance again. Three of his brothers were murdered by a relative of the women, on the pretext that the jirga’s decision of killing the two men in the video must be upheld somehow.

The police has since arrested the local cleric, Maulvi Javed and four suspects on the charges of murdering the three brothers, according to media reports. Khan petitioned the SC on January 5 to re-open the Kohistan case.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2013.