Credit: MariyamAftab
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Two men have been sentenced to death by a Pakistani court for the gang rape of a French woman in front of her children in Lahore last year.
According to Prosecutor Hafiz Asghar, the sentence was handed down by the court after the trial of the two men Abid Malhi and Shafqat Ali inside the prison on Saturday.
However, Judge Arshad Hussain Bhutta ordered that before the two men would be killed, they are to serve 14 years imprisonment for other counts of their charges.
Pakistani law allows for an appeal, but it is not yet clear if the men will explore this.
The crime was committed last year, when the French woman ran out of fuel and was waiting for help on the highway.
The victim had locked the doors of the car with her windows wound up when she saw Malhi and Ali approach.
The two men however broke a window and dragged the woman outside where they raped her at gunpoint in front of her terrified children.
They later stole her money, jewellery, and bank cards before fleeing.
Police tracked the convicts down via mobile phone data and arrested them days after the incident.
There was a match between their DNA samples and samples taken from the crime scene.
Additionally, the victim identified the convicts during the hearing.
On the weight of the evidence, one of the two men, Ali confessed to the crime before a magistrate.
Considering the outrage that followed the crime, the trial was handled by an anti-terrorism court for expediency and was well covered by Pakistani television.
