In Pakistan, women previously denied bail are being allowed it after a small legal change by President Musharraf. Not much, but any small advance in changing repressive laws should be appaluded.
Seventy women awaiting trials on charges such as murder and adultery have been released on bail from jails in eastern Pakistan after President Pervez Musharraf amended a law to give them the right to bail – a right previously denied to women in Pakistan.
Mr Musharraf amended the controversial Hudood Ordinance last Friday to allow women awaiting trial on charges of adultery and other crimes to qualify for bail. The women were freed in the past two days from jails in various cities in the eastern Punjab province, provincial prisons chief Sarfaraz Mufti said.
No explanation is given as to why women specifically should be denied bail, but one can guess. Whereas I recall celebrated cases of rape and murder of women by men in Pakistan where the men have been walking around free.
No such signs of civilisation in the US, however, where a mother who was obviously acutely mentally ill is for the second time on trial for murder for killing her five children. The first jury convicted her of capital murder but that was overturned on a technicality.
Her lawyers say she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and did not know it was wrong to kill seven-year-old Noah, five-year-old John, three-year-old Paul, two-year-old Luke and six-month-old Mary.
Prosecutors say Yates knew her actions were wrong because she waited until her husband left for work to drown the children in the tub and then made an emergency phone call, and later told a detective that she was a bad mother and wanted to be punished….
Saeed acknowledged that if someone is psychotic, discontinuing an anti-psychotic medicine could make the person’s condition worse.
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