American femme fatale Cynthia D. Ritchie creates tumult in Pakistan

Islamabad

A new femme fatale has captured the imagination of Pakistani hoi polloi's consciousness.

American Cynthia D. Ritchie, claiming to be an adventurist, self-proclaimed filmmaker, journo and blogger, is front and centre of the new controversy.

Training with Pakistani female commandos in a black gear and shades (watch YouTube video), Ritchie, an American now living and reporting out of Pakistan, is reportedly close to the ruling establishment.

Reminiscent of David Coleman Headley, an American adopted by Pakistan's ISI, Ritchie is now caught in a violent political maelstrom.

Pakistani-American Headley, 59, is currently in an undisclosed US prison after pleading guilty in Chicago to a dozen terrorism counts and cooperating with authorities in the US and India. He is serving a 35-year sentence.

He admitted to numerous reconnaissance missions from Chicago to Mumbai for the purpose of surveying terrorist targets for the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. In the past, Headley broke down the role of Pakistan's ISI secret intelligence organisation and said the government agency was in cahoots with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a bloodthirsty Pakistani terror outfit which global most wanted Hafiz Saeed is said to have founded.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has taken an antagonistic view of her utterances. The PPP filed an FIR against Ritchie for her alleged hateful comments against the late Benazir Bhutto.

PPP Peshawar district President Zulfiqar Afghani registered a case against the blogger from the US at the Gulbhar police station. It is obvious that the ruling establishment and the ISI in cahoots are using her as a stalking horse against the principal opposition party PPP.

Advocate Mehr Sultana, who is the Provincial Secretary Information of the PPP's women wing, has stepped into the cage match, asking the government to expel Ritchie for "hateful and slanderous comments" against former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

In a statement on Tuesday, the PPP leader said that her review article against former PPP Chairperson and first female Muslim Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was causing provocation and deep resentment among the leaders, workers and supporters of the party.

She said the conspiracies of Ritchie against PPP and pictures with Pakistani military representatives sent a negative message among the masses of the country.

Sultana said that Ritchie, who had introduced herself as a tourist, journalist and belly dancer, was interfering in the internal affairs by making such demeaning comments about Benazir Bhutto.

"Shaheed Benazir Bhutto is the name of an ideology as she had followed Bhutto footprints and rendered matchless sacrifice for the sake of people and democracy," Sultana added.

All hell broke loose last week when PPP filed a complaint with the Federal Investigation Agency's (FIA) cybercrime wing against Ritchie for "hateful comments and slander" against former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, reported Dawn.

Ritchie, in her tweet, had made some remarks which were "very derogatory and slanderous" about Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari's marital life, according to the PPP lawyer.

Ritchie made the comment on a tweet discussing the recent violent confrontation between model Uzma Khan and a woman named Amna Usman, who accused the model of having a relationship with her husband of 13 years and used this allegation to justify her violent treatment of the model.

To buttress her point about the Bhuttos, Ritchie posted the front page of the book "Indecent Correspondence: Secret sex life of Benazir Bhutto". The book written by Roshan Mirza deals with the sexual adventures of some high-profile Pakistani women.

"These women engage/hire go-go boys for their sexual escapades... And strange enough that these women are not from a sexually-liberal country, but from a political dynasty of Pakistan," Mirza wrote.