One of the most intractable problems in Pakistani law is that the heirs the murdered can forgive murderers, and there is little the state can do about it. I know someone whose brother killed her father, but the son went unpunished not because the father was a terrible man (which he was) but because the sister of the father formally forgave him. This was but one of many problems with honour killing as the heir – usually a mother – would forgive her son or husband for killing her daughter. Partly, of course, because the penalty for murder is death. For honour killing this loophole was closed a few years ago, except in cases of death penalty, where forgiveness brings life imprisonment. In the horrific hypothetical that I were the heir of someone who was murdered, would I forgive them if they were otherwise to be accorded death, if the alternative was nothing at all, not even imprisonment? I hope so. Then, there is the inevitable that the rich can pay the poor to forgive crimes against them.
It’s strange to meet someone socially who one knows killed his father.
In Pakistan, as in America, the president also has the power to pardon. Today, Trump pardoned the killers who committed a terrible massacre of civilians in Baghdad, firing into an unarmed crowd with machine guns. A century ago they would have been feted perhaps as General Dyer was in some quarters, today they’re pardoned by a president who seems determined to be a caricature of all that is worst about people.