70 Murders, Yet Close to Going Free in Pakistan

Fear prevents many Pakistanis from confronting militants in court. Fida Hussein Ghalvi testified against one such suspect and has paid for his courage since.

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and WAQAR GILLANI
NYT

MULTAN, Pakistan — It has been 12 years since Fida Hussein Ghalvi testified against the militant who was charged with killing 12 members of his family. But some days he feels as if he were the one who ended up in jail. He still gets threats, his servants all quit and an armed guard is posted at his gate.

Most maddening is the fact that the militant — Malik Ishaq, one of the founders of the country’s most vicious sectarian group, whose police record has a dizzying tally of at least 70 murders — has never had a conviction that stuck.

In Pakistan, the weakness of the state is matched only by the strength of its criminals. When Mr. Ishaq was arrested in 1997, he unleashed his broad network against his opponents, killing witnesses, threatening judges and intimidating the police, leading nearly all of the prosecutions against him to collapse eventually.

Now, with the cases against him mostly exhausted, Mr. Ishaq, 50, jihadi hero and leader of the militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, could be out on bail as early as this month. That prospect terrifies Mr. Ghalvi, whose world has shrunk to the size of his house in this central Pakistani city.

(More here.)