JEDDAH, 17 August 2006 — The case of Zarni, the 20-year-old Pakistani woman who accused her father of sexual and physical abuse and then retracted the charges, took another turn yesterday when a former social worker from the battered women’s shelter where Zarni had stayed claimed that officials pressured the woman to go back on her accusations.

The social worker did not want to be named in this report for fear of recriminations. She said that officials at the women’s shelter allowed Zarni’s mother to contact her but prevented the woman who brought the case to the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), Umm Abdul Aziz, from meeting with Zarni during her stay at the shelter.

Umm Abdul Aziz, 28, said she fears that Zarni will be sent back to Pakistan and murdered in an honor killing as retribution for harming the honor of her father.

The source also told Arab News that the Pakistan Consulate contacted the shelter in order to try to close the abuse case as quickly and quietly as possible.

The spokesman for the Pakistan Consulate, Muhammad Jameel, denied this allegation.

“This is wrong. We have not contacted anyone regarding this case,” he said. “Neither the girl nor the family has contacted us.”

Fatima Ghazi, the manager of the women’s shelter in Jeddah, confirmed that they prevented Umm Abdul Aziz from contacting Zarni by orders from the Prosecution Commission. Ghazi says that nobody is allowed to visit the women’s shelter unless approved by the commission or the NSHR.

Contrary to reports that Zarni was sent to Jeddah’s Breman Prison after she retracted her accusations against her father, Ghazi says an official (who she could not or would not identify) ordered Zarni’s transfer to jail before she made her retraction. No one knows what happened at Breman Prison; Zarni went directly to her family when she was released.

She spent 25 days in prison and, according to Ghazi, it was during this time in jail that she retracted her accusation against her father. Ghazi says nobody at the shelter played a role in persuading Zarni to change her allegations.

Arab News was unable to contact Zarni yesterday, but in an interview with her in June she described having been repeatedly sexually abused by her father over three years in their residence in Jeddah’s Al-Aziziya neighborhood.

Umm Abdul Aziz, with the help of a young Pakistani man, Kashif, who expressed his desire to marry Zarni, allegedly helped Zarni obtain video evidence of her father’s sexual abuse.

Several attempts to contact Omar Al-Aidrous, the legal representative of Zarni’s father, were unsuccessful as his mobile phone was turned off.

Kashif told Arab News yesterday that he contacted Zarni’s family after the father and Zarni were out of jail through the assistance of Al-Aziziya ombudsman Ahmad Al-Zahrani. Kashif said the family cheated him out of SR11,000. According to him, the family promised to get Zarni married to him. Kashif was asked to meet them on a certain date in the court to solemnize the marriage but, as Kashif says, nobody from the family turned up on that date.

Meanwhile, the question of Zarni’s fate still hangs in the balance. Will she be sent back to Pakistan to face an honor killing?

According to the Pakistan Consulate, the family has not yet applied for a passport for Zarni.

“They are Pakistanis and we don’t have the right to stop them,” said Muhammad Jameel.

When asked about the possibility of Zarni being murdered for allegedly dishonoring her father, the spokesman dismissed the notion. “Pakistan is a liberal society now,” he said. “Honor killings rarely take place anymore.”