Honor-killing case case thrown out by court in Pakistan

Aftenposten:

An appeals court in Pakistan has thrown out a case involving a Norwegian-Pakistani man suspected of killing his daughter because she allegedly had dishonoured the family.

Azhar Iqbal may soon be on his way back to Norway, after the Lahore High Court rejected prosecutors' claims that a car accident in which Azhar Iqbal's daughter Rahila Iqbal died was no accident.

Rahila Iqbal's father, her maternal grandfather and a man driving the car had been charged and imprisoned after the June 1 car accident.

Now all three men have been released from prison, and Azhar Iqbal hopes to be home by the end of December.

"Now he wants to travel home to his family," his attorney, Abid Raja, told Aftenposten.no. "There are a few formalities to arrange first. Just getting his passport returned will probably take a week."

There was no immediate word on why the appeals court threw out the case.

The death of Rahila Iqbal sparked headlines last summer, after her husband alleged she'd been killed because she hadn't married the man her family had selected for her.

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