Pakistan Navy’s ‘Yamama’ holds bilateral exercise with Saudi ship in Jeddah

QUETTA: Police in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province said on Wednesday they had booked a man for killing his 14-year-old daughter, an American citizen, on allegations she had committed blasphemy and posted objectionable videos of herself on TikTok.
Anwaar-ul-Haq, who was living in New York for the past 28 years, returned with his family to the southwestern Quetta city on Jan. 22 to meet relatives in the city, Station House Officer (SHO) Babar Shahwani of the Gawalmandi Police Station said.
Shahwani said Haq filed a complaint with police on Jan. 27 that unidentified men shot his daughter dead outside their home in Quetta at around 11:00 pm.
“The police commenced initial investigations from the family and we booked her father and uncle who during interrogations confessed to killing Hira,” Shahwani told Arab News.
Zohaib Mohsin, senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) for Serious Crimes Investigation Wing Balochistan, told Arab News that Haq brought his daughter outside their home when his brother-in-law, Muhammad Tayyab, shot her multiple times.
“We have confiscated Hira’s mobile phone and sent for forensic which would unfold more aspects of the murder,” Mohsin said.
Shahwani said Haq confessed during interrogation that he killed his daughter and alleged that she stopped believing in Islam and used to make blasphemous remarks, and posted objectionable videos of herself on TikTok. 
Under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or its religious figures can be sentenced to death. Authorities have yet to carry out such a penalty, although the accusation of blasphemy and opposition to the law can incite mob violence or reprisals.
Mohsin said the investigation so far has revealed that the family objected to Hira’s dressing, lifestyle, social gatherings and relations. 
Arab News attempted to contact Hira’s family but they refused to speak to the media.
Every year, hundreds of women in conservative Pakistan are victims of “honor killings,” carried out by relatives professing to be acting in defense of a family’s honor, rights group say, most often in deeply conservative rural areas.
According to an annual report on women’s honor killings in Balochistan issued by the Aurat Foundation (AF), a private group advocating for women’s rights and voicing against the honor killings of women in the impoverished province, 33 women were killed in Balochistan on the name of honor from January to December 2024. 
The report also said 212 women were killed in Balochistan in the name of honor during the last five years.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) announced on Wednesday it has sacked 13 members for being involved in the 2024 Greek boat tragedy that resulted in the deaths of five citizens, saying that its crackdown against human traffickers in the country was continuing. 
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered strict action against human trafficking rings that lure Pakistani migrants with the fake promise of a better life in return for money, and help them undertake perilous illegal journeys via sea to Europe. 
Five Pakistanis were killed when a migrant boat sank near the Greek island of Gavdos in December 2024. Another migrant boat sank capsized near the coast of Morocco on Jan. 15 carrying 86 migrants on board. Sixty-six Pakistanis were on the ship, according to migrant rights group Walking Borders.
“An inspector, two sub-inspectors, two head constables and eight constables were dismissed from service for their involvement in the 2024 Greek boat accident,” an FIA spokesperson said in a statement.
The FIA said promotions of three constables had been halted, adding that all dismissed officials were stationed at the airport in Pakistan’s eastern city of Faisalabad. 
It said 37 FIA officials had been removed from service earlier for their involvement in various boat accidents. 
“Actions continue against officials involved in a boat accident on the prime minister’s instructions,” the agency said. 
In 2023, hundreds of migrants, including 262 Pakistanis, drowned when an overcrowded vessel capsized and sank in international waters off the southwestern Greek coastal town of Pylos. It was one of the deadliest boat disasters ever recorded in the Mediterranean Sea.