Pakistan murders "serial killer" who raped and murdered Zainab Ansari, 7 years old: NPR

Mohammad Imran, the man known to have raped and murdered seven-year-old Zainab Ansari, and killed at least seven other children in Pakistan, was executed Wednesday in a prison in the eastern city of Lahore. country.

"Imran was taken to the gallows just before dawn and was hanged with a rope in the presence of a magistrate and a doctor," said a local police chief, Mohammad Afzal , at the Washington Post Wednesday.

However, according to some sources, Imran – whom the prosecutors described as a serial killer – was also hanged in the presence of Zainab's father, Mohammed Amin Ansari.

The Pakistani High Court had previously rejected a request for execution of an execution that would have been rare.

The highly publicized death of Zainab has angered public opinion in Kasur, a town of less than a million inhabitants located in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous state. . At least 13 children have been raped and killed in the last two years – among them the eight for whom Imran was sentenced in February.

The Kasur protesters, irritated by what they considered the indifference of the authorities, destroyed police cars and tried to burn a police station. Two people died during the demonstrations.

"Zainab, considering your martyrdom, we will seek responsibility for all similar events of the past.We will not rest without it," reads a poster placed in Kasur after his death.

Ansari and his wife, Nusrat, were participating in a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in January when family members informed him that his daughter did not attend his Quran lesson.

Four days later, his body was found in a garbage bin in the city of Kasur, near Lahore.

Zainab's father sought to announce the death of his daughter, spreading a virulent photo of her.

Imran was arrested two weeks after the discovery of Zainab's body. According to the police, Reuters found DNA evidence linking him to the death of the girl and seven other girls. He admitted to raping eight boys and girls and killing six, police said. He was sentenced to four death sentences.

As NPR's Diaa Hadid reports, anger over Zainab's death not only because of his death and that of other children, but also a deeper resentment towards government officials considered "corrupt" , ineffective and ineffective ".

"And they see them as serving the rich and despising the poor, and most of the families whose children have been killed here are very poor," Diaa said.

"In Pakistan, talking about sexual abuse was considered shameful," she said earlier this year. "But after Zainab disappeared, some well-known Pakistani women spoke publicly about what they endured in childhood, and a few dozen Pakistani families also reported that their children had been abused, according to Sahil. an organization defending the rights of the child. "