JEDDAH, 14 June 2007 — A Preliminary Court in Jeddah recently sentenced Zarni, the 21-year-old Pakistani woman who last June accused her father of sexually and physically abusing her, to eight months in jail and her boyfriend, Kashif, to one year in jail for making false accusations.
People in the Kingdom were left shocked when Zarni alleged in the national media that her father had sexually abused her for a period of three years. Her case was also taken up by the National Society for Human Rights.
Following media reports, Jeddah police detained Zarni’s 40-year-old father, Muhammad Yaqub Jamali, for questioning. Police disclosed that Zarni had made the accusations up and that during questioning had broken down and admitted she had concocted the allegations with others.
On Aug. 18, 2006, Zarni, accompanied by her family, arrived at the Arab News office in Jeddah and admitted that her father was innocent and that she had lied working with her Pakistani boyfriend Kashif, 32, who had previously proposed to marry her and been turned down by Zarni’s father. She also revealed that she had been involved in a relationship with Kashif for over a year.
“My father never raped me,” she told Arab News. “I never said that he raped me. I only knew that this was being said of my father when I was told what was published in the paper.”
When asked about her initial statements, Zarni said Umm Abdul Aziz first encouraged her to complain to the National Society for Human Rights and had made the allegations up. Zarni said that Umm Abdul Aziz asked her not to speak Arabic and that she would speak on her behalf.
“I was scared, so I did what they asked me to do,” she said, adding that Kashif had threatened to kill her and her family if she did not comply in having a relationship with him.
Following the sentencing, Zarni’s father said that Kashif recently abducted Zarni from her home in Aziziah. He told Arab News that Kashif, accompanied by two other Pakistani men and another woman in a car, knocked on the family home when there was no one there except Zarni and her mother. He added that when the mother opened the door, Kashif pushed her inside and left with Zarni, who was only wearing her house clothes.
He also revealed that his daughter suffers from a physiological disorder and had been put under tremendous pressure by Kashif and his accomplices, adding that he is seeking justice and will not drop charges that he has filed with the police.
