Islamabad: Known for his sharp rhetoric against India, senior Pakistani diplomat Munir Akram, who at age 74 has been appointed as Islamabad’s new envoy to the UN, has an unsavoury past – of a woman-beater.
In January 2003, when Munir Akram was holding charge as Pakistan’s top envoy at the United Nations (UN), his then 35-year-old live-in girlfriend Marijana Mihic had filed a case of battery against the envoy.
On December 10, 2002, at 1.36 a.m. Marijana Miric had called in December 10, 2002 the New York police to Munir Akram’s home in Manhattan, which she shared with him. She complained that Akram had beaten her up. She told the police that Akram, who she initially identified as her husband, had smashed her head against a wall, bruised her arm, and that he had hit her earlier too.
Marjorie Tiven, the then city commissioner in charge of UN issues, wrote to the US mission requesting that Akram’s immunity be removed so that they could prosecute him.
After the police walked into the flat, Marijana said that Akram was her ‘boyfriend’ and that after an argument with him she had tried to leave.
“He prevented her (Marijana Mihic ) from leaving, he grabbed her and she fell,” police spokesman Lt Brian Burke was quoted as saying by the ‘New York Times’ then. The police officers at the scene reported that Marijana had a bruise on her head.
Akram, who was 57 then, was at the residence when the police arrived. A spokesman for the Pakistani mission told the police later that Akram and his friend had reconciled and hence there was no need to pursue the matter any further. Hence February 4, 2003, the District Attorney’s office dropped the investigation into the case.
IANS