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Pakistan Backs Down, Partly, on Activist

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

We have an update now on a story we aired earlier this week. It involves a Pakistani woman, Muhktaran Bibi, who was the victim of a notorious gang-rape in Pakistan several years ago. A US group had invited Muhktaran to come to the US this week to speak about violence against women. But Pakistani officials barred her from leaving the country, and Muhktaran said she'd been put under house arrest.

Now after media reports and pressure from the Bush administration, Pakistan has agreed to take Muhktaran Bibi off the country's exit control list. But according to her trip sponsors, Pakistani officials have kept Muhktaran's passport and so, they say, she is still not free to make her trip to the US. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.