France tries Pakistani man for torching woman

Amer Mushtaq Butt burned his girlfriend because she wouldn't marry him. He got the idea to burn his girlfriend because he was poor [end sarcasm]. Reuters

PARIS, Feb 10 (Reuters) - A Pakistani man went on trial in France on Tuesday for setting his ex-girlfriend alight after she refused to marry him, in a case that rights groups are using as as a symbol of violence against women in poor neighbourhoods.

Amer Mushtaq Butt, 28, doused Chahrazade Belayni in petrol and set fire to her on the street as she was leaving her home in the under-privileged Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Marne in 2005.

She suffered third-degree burns on 60 percent of her body, fell into a coma and underwent many operations. Belayni, now 21, works for the police.

"I want him to pay for what he did, not for my sake but to show other girls who have problems with their partners that it's possible to fight back and the justice system won't abandon them," she told reporters just before the trial opened.[...]

Human rights groups such as the prominent "Ni Putes Ni Soumises" ("Neither whores nor submissive women") say violence against women is rife in certain poor communities with high Muslim populations on the outskirts of French cities.

Maybe it's not the social-economic status of peolpe that cause them to burn their partners but rather a sick ideology otherwise known as islam.