3 PPP leaders raped, assaulted me: US blogger

Islamabad, June 6: A Pakistan-based American blogger has accused three senior leaders of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) of raping and assaulting her in 2011.

Cynthia D. Ritchie made the allegation through a video clip posted on her Facebook page on Friday and soon it went viral on social media. “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 claimed. She also said that former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and former health minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin “physically manhandled” her while Gilani was staying at the “President’s House” in Islamabad.

Ritchie’s allegations have escalated the already bitter row between her and the party after she posted a comment on a tweet on May 28 against slain PPP leader and former prime minister Benzair Bhutto, which was termed as derogatory by the party leaders who filed a complaint against her at the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

In another post, Ritchie said that the rape assault against her took place at Malik’s house in the Ministers’ Enclave around the time of the raid in which Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011.

“I thought it (was) a meeting about my visa but I was given flowers/a drugged drink," she wrote. He also said that she kept mum as no one in the then PPP government helped her.

PPP was in power from 2008 until 2013 and Gilani was the prime minister until he was removed by the Supreme Court in June 2012 for disobeying court orders. Ritchie also said she had informed about the incident to “someone” at the US Embassy in Pakistan in 2011, “but due to ‘fluid’ situation and ‘complex’ relations between US and Pakistan, [the] response was less than adequate”.

However, Gilani has denied the charges and said that he is even considering responding to such allegations, “humiliation and disgrace”. “Who has given them the right to malign politicians?” he asked.