American blogger accuses top former minister of rape

ISLAMABAD: The conflict between the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan-based American blogger Cynthia D. Ritchie has intensified after the latter came out with allegations of rape and assault against some of its top leaders.

Ritchie, who was at the centre of a controversy last week when she tweeted that what the PPP described as “derogatory and slanderous remarks” about slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, accused former interior minister Rehman Malik of having raped her in Islamabad in 2011.

“In 2011, I was raped by the former interior minister Rehman Malik. That’s right, I’ll say it again. I was raped by the then interior minister Rehman Malik,” she said in a live video on her Facebook page, also accusing former federal minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin and ex-prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of “physically manhandling” while Gilani was staying at the “President’s House.”

Ritchie said she was reserving “some of the more graphic details” because her audience could include children, but added that she would be “happy to go into more detail” with neutral investigative journalists.

The blogger has nearly 220,000 followers on Twitter and a hashtag championing her as a “pride of Pakistan” (#Cynthiaisprideofpakistan) was the top trend on Friday evening.

In a tweet before going live on Facebook, the American alleged members of “#Zardarisfilthyppp” were threatening her because “they know that over the years I have been raped/assaulted by men in the highest ranks of PPP. They don’t want the world to know.”