The ongoing conflict between the PPP and Pakistan-based American blogger Cynthia D. Ritchie intensified on Friday after the she came out with allegations of rape and assault against some top PPP leaders.
Ritchie, who was at the centre of the news last week when she tweeted about slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the top cadre of PPP described the remarks as “derogatory” .
In a live video on her Facebook page she claimed that, In 2011, she was raped by the former interior minister Rehman Malik.
“That’s right, I’ll say it again. I was raped by the then interior minister Rehman Malik”
She also accused former federal minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin and ex-prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of “physically manhandling” her while Gilani was staying at the “President’s House”.
Ritchie said she was reserving “some of the more graphic details” because her audience could include children, but added that she would be “happy to go into more detail” with neutral investigative journalists.
Both Malik and Gilani have denied the allegations in separate statements.
In a tweet before going live on Facebook, the American alleged members of “#ZardarisFilthyPPP” were threatening her because “they know that over the years I have been raped/assaulted by men in the highest ranks of PPP. They don’t want the world to know.”
After her allegations, she said the alleged assault took place at Malik’s house in the Ministers’ Enclave around the time of the raid in which Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed.
She wrote,”I thought it was a meeting about my visa but I was given flowers/a drugged drink.”
Cynthia claimed that she has evidence of everything she has been posting.
Ritchie also said she had informed about the incident to someone at the US Embassy in 2011, but due to ‘fluid’ situation and ‘complex’ relations between US and Pakistan, the response was less than adequate.
There is more to come :
“You think I don’t have contacts in the United States, you think I don’t have contacts here or elsewhere to be able to track and trace what you were doing. For those who’ve called me a bitch because I have dared to stand up to you, you haven’t seen nothing yet.” she said.
However, the accussed have denied all the claim made by Ritchie claiming them as baseless.