'Blood money' tradition might help resolve U.S.-Pakistani row
The practice of a killer winning exoneration by paying his victim's family is common in the country, and some say it could help resolve the case of Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor who killed two men in Lahore.
Reporting from Pattoki,
Aziz Ahmed was supposed to die. In 2006 he used a meat cleaver to kill a friend he thought had been sleeping with his wife. He confessed and was sentenced to be hanged.
But last month Ahmed won his freedom; not because his confession was recanted or fresh evidence was presented, but because of a wad of cash. He paid the victim's family $9,400 and walked out of prison a free man. The slain man's relatives said they would use the money to buy the widow a cookware shop in this dusty farm town in Punjab, near the Indian border.
"We're not bitter about this at all," said Mohammed Nasir, brother of the victim, Ghulam Sarwar. "This money will take care of Ghulam's wife and children."
What outsiders might describe as "blood money" is a tenet of Islamic law sanctioned by Pakistani jurisprudence and used, by some estimates, in up to 60% of homicide cases here. The practice is called diyat, and it could be the means by which the United States and Pakistan extricate themselves from a dangerous diplomatic row that has strained relations between the two governments.
Read:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan-blood-money-20110313,0,4972714.story____________________________________________________________________________________
Not sure about Pakistan but the going rates for diyyah in Saudi Arabia are:
100,000 riyals if the victim is a Muslim man
50,000 riyals if a Muslim woman
50,000 riyals if a Christian or Jewish man
25,000 riyals if a Christian or Jewish woman
6,666 riyals if a Hindu man
3,333 riyals if a Hindu woman.
