Musharaff allowed a Pakistani gang rape victim to travel abroad

Pakistan's Musharraf revoked his ban on the victim of a gang-rape to travel abroad, after the Supreme Court ordered that 13 men involved in the crime should be rearrested.

Earlier this month President Musharraf had banned Mai from traveling to America, because her testimony of the ordeal she had gone through "would have tarnished Pakistan's international image".

Mukhtaran Mai, a simple, illiterate peasant woman of a small village, was gang raped on the orders of a local council in Pundjub for her brother's alleged affair with a woman from a higher caste family. This kind of punishment is supposed to lead to social ostracism of a condemned woman, which in turn quite often ends up with suicide.

"But Ms. Mai refused to back down, dedicating her life to social work and to changing attitudes about women", writes the Christian Science Monitor.

Mr. Musharaff had to change his attitude to the brave lady after strong criticism by Washington of which Musharraf is a close ally.