MY SON SHOULD BE SHOT ON SIGHT, SAYS QANDEEL’S FATHER

On Wednesday, Amnesty International welcomed the decision of Punjab authorities to register Qandeel Baloch’s murder as a crime against the state, and refuse her family the legal right to grant their son clemency. After Qandeel’s death her father, Muhammad Azeem, had filed a police report against his sons. In an interview with the BBC, the social media starlet’s parents spoke about their daughter’s murder and their relationship with her prior to her death. “I say he should be shot on sight. He suffocated my little one,” Baloch’s father Muhammad Azeem said, referring to his son Waseem who killed Qandeel. “We were drugged, asleep upstairs. She must have called out to us,” her father revealed. Azeem described Qandeel as his “best friend,” but claimed that his son Waseem had been “crazed.” Her mother said the 26-year-old used to share all her secrets with her. “We were mother and daughter, sharing all our sorrows and secrets. She used to tell me ‘Your daughter is working hard, she’ll go far’,” she said. Recalling the night of the murder, Qandeel’s mother said she and Azeem were also drugged the night of the murder. “My husband and I fell deep asleep. We had drunk milk, it had been laced with sedatives,” she said. “In the morning, I called Qandeel for breakfast… but she didn’t get up.” Her mother, describing Qandeel’s corpse, said, “Her whole face was covered in bruises, her tongue was black, her lips were black.”