Man Sentenced To 700 Years In Jail For Killing 100 Children In  Lahore, Pakistan
CNN INTERNATIONAL - WORLD NEWS 03/16/00 PAKISTANI SERIAL CHILD KILLER CONVICTION MARINA KOLBE, CNN ANCHOR: A Pakistani man charged with killing as many as 100 children has been convicted and sentenced. CNN's Hannah Bloch joins us from Islamabad with the details. Hannah.</s>HANNAH BLOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Marina, Judge Allah Baksh Ranja today sentenced Javed Iqbal to 700 years in jail and execution for killing 100 children in Lahore during a six-month period last year. And in a very unusual decision, he ordered that Javed Iqbal should be killed by strangulation and that his body should be chopped into 100 pieces and dissolved in a vat of acid, which is how Javed Iqbal killed these 100 children.</s>KOLBE: What evidence did the court find?</s>BLOCH: Main evidence came in a confessional letter that Javed Iqbal sent to police and some local newspapers here in December. It was a very detailed letter showing that he had killed these children, leading the police to his house in Lahore, where they found children's clothing and shoes and vats of acid with dissolved bones and body parts in them. That was the main evidence that the police had and the courts had.</s>KOLBE: Did he not later recant writing that letter?</s>BLOCH: He did later recant. When he came to court, he said that he was innocent, and that this was all a trick he had played to highlight police inefficiency and corruption.</s>KOLBE: What kind of reaction has there been from victims' families?</s>BLOCH: The victims' families are very, very relieved to see this man brought to justice. They mostly are very poor families. The children who were killed were working on the streets begging and doing things like shoe shining. These families were very vulnerable. And the children were very vulnerable. And this case really shocked Pakistan because of its brutality and because of the magnitude of the killings.</s>KOLBE: Hannah, any possibility of a delay for appeal? How quickly do they expect that this sentence will be carried out?</s>BLOCH: Javed Iqbal's lawyer has already said that the sentence will be appealed. So it will go through the courts now. It's difficult to say how long that will take.</s>KOLBE: CNN's Hannah Bloch reporting. END TO ORDER VIDEOTAPES AND TRANSCRIPTS OF CNN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE THE SECURE ONLINE ORDER FROM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com Search CNN.com CNNSI.com CNNmoney.com The Web