Pakistan Police Fired in Lip-Sewing Probe

MULTAN, Pakistan - Seven Pakistani police officers have been fired after media reports that they sewed shut a prisoner's lips to stop him from shouting insults at them, an official said on Saturday.

A deputy inspector-general of police, Malik Mohammed Iqbal, said he fired the officers Saturday after receiving a report about the alleged incident Thursday at a lockup in Vehari town, about 60 miles east of the city of Multan.

However, Iqbal said it was "yet to be determined who actually sewed the lips of the prisoner," whom he identified as Mohammed Hussain.

Iqbal said the inmate "initially accused police of torturing him and sewing his lips" but later "changed his statement and said he sewed up his lips with his own hand."

"This is a sensitive matter, and we will do justice with him (Hussain) if police were found guilty of torturing him," Iqbal said.

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Pakistan's largest-circulation English-language newspaper, The News, reported Saturday that police sewed Hussain's lips when he "protested the police torture and used filthy language against the policemen who were torturing him."

Also Saturday, Ifat Pasha, a doctor who treated the prisoner, said he saw four stitches on the man's lips. "I think somebody did this thing to him," the doctor said.

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But Iqbal said it was yet to be determined exactly what happened because the prisoner first accused police of the crime but later retracted his statement and said he had sewn his own lips shut.

The English-language newspaper The News reported police in Vehari, a town in central Punjab province, sewed Mohammad Hussain's lips shut with jute yarn when he used "filthy language" to protest against torture.

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL14478.htm

Frickin' amateurs.

I'M KIDDING.

These are the people Bush calls "friend." Pretty disgusting eh?