Where justice is denied and criminals are safe: Is there such a country?

How would you like to live in a country where:

• A man with a police record of 70 murders has never had a conviction that stuck.
• Where the weakness of the state is matched by the strength of its criminals.
• Where a criminal commands a broad network of friends in and out of government who can be launched against his opponents, killing witnesses, threatening judges and intimidating the police, so that nearly all of the prosecutions against him collapse.
• Where the founder of a militant group that organized last year’s attacks in Mumbai, India, killing more than 160 people, will soon be released from jail.
• Where police have no forensics tools, so that the burden falls on witnesses, who, without a functioning protection program, routinely refuse to appear.
• Where the country’s intelligence agencies nurture militants as proxy forces who can intimidate the police.
• Where civilian victims, judges or even police officials, dare not buck the untouchable network of support for criminals by the intelligence agencies.
• Where the government spy agency supports a hard-line Sunni group committed to killing Shia of all kinds.
• Where only 3 percent of murder cases end in conviction.
• Where the police ask for money to pursue cases and fulfill illegal orders from higher-ups to make deals with criminals.
• Where an honest police officer spent three months persuading a telephone line repairman to testify as a witness, coaxing a handwriting expert to testify in court, facing the intimidation of his car being sprayed with bullets, only to have the conviction he achieved overturned by the Supreme Court.
• Where militant groups have linked up with Al Qaeda and the Taliban and criminal gangs have international ambitions.

Welcome to Pakistan. The people of that country deserve better.

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