Michelle

A Pakistani federal court decided this week to give custody of a 13-year-old Christian girl to a Muslim man who kidnapped, forcibly converted, raped and married her in August. Maria Shahbaz’s parents were devastated at the ruling Tuesday, after the two-judge bench of the newly constituted Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) rejected her official birth record and disregarded earlier judicial findings that the marriage was illegal. The ruling came in an atmosphere of intimidation as 150 male friends and family members of the rapist had arrived to the court to support him.  Justice Karim Khan Agha and Justice Syed Hassan Azhar Rizvi accepted Maria’s statement, which her parents and their attorney say was given under coercion, that she had converted to Islam and married 30-year-old Shehryar Ahmad of her own free will. “We were hopeful that the court would consider the girl’s official birth document (B-Form) and the sessions court order confirming that the accused had contracted an illegal marriage with a minor,” her parent’s lawyer stated. He also said the court had failed to consider that the girl had remained in the custody of the suspect for more than six months, increasing the probability of coercion. “The judges should have taken into account that she was likely to give a statement in the accused’s favor under duress,” he said. “It is deeply disappointing that the court did not provide a safe and conducive environment for recording her testimony.” The girl’s father said said his neighbor Ahmad had abducted his daughter when she stepped outside their home to go to a nearby shop. Human rights advocates say such cases follow a recurring pattern in Pakistan, where girls, some as young as 10, are abducted, forcibly converted and sexually abused under the cover of Islamic “marriages.” Victims are often pressured to record statements favoring their abductors, while courts frequently disregard documentary evidence of age and return the children to their alleged kidnappers as “legal wives.” In Punjab, Maria’s home state, the legal minimum age of marriage for girls is 16. At the national level, the Christian Marriage (Amendment) Act 2024 raised the marriageable age to 18 for Christians; however, if Christian girls convert to Islam, they are treated as Muslims under Sharia, which allows marriage at a younger age.

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