Six Jordanian widows handed over to NGO

By Abdul Sami Paracha

KOHAT: Six Jordanian widows were handed over to the chairman of the World Prisoners’ Relief Commission, Pakistan, by unknown tribesmen here on Monday morning.

In a press release issued here, the commission’s Pakistan chapter chairman Javed Ibrahim Paracha said husbands of the six women had died in the Afghanistan fighting some time ago. He said a few religious-minded tribesmen approached him and told him that the women who had children along with them wanted to go back to their country.

Mr Paracha contacted the ambassador of Jordan in Islamabad, who talked to the women and confirmed the identity of their relatives in Jordan. He requested Mr Paracha to bring the families to Islamabad as soon as possible so that arrangements for their early return to their country could be made.

Mr Paracha told Dawn that the women were handed over to him by tribesmen, but they did not disclose the name of the tribal area where they had been kept after the deaths of their husbands. He claimed that the women were in fact princesses and members of the royal family of Jordan.

Sources, however, said the women’s husbands had died during air strikes on the hideouts of militants in Orakzai and Kurram agencies a few months ago.

The women will be handed over to the Jordanian ambassador in Islamabad on Oct 7.
Source: Dawn
Date:10/6/2009