Pakistan court orders release of "same-sex couple"

ISLAMABAD, June 28 (Reuters) Pakistan's Supreme Court today ordered a couple to be released from prison after a lower court ruled the husband was a woman and said their same-sex marriage was against Islam.

A high court in the city of Lahore sent the couple to jail for three years last month for lying to the court by saying the husband, Shumail Raj, was a man.

The case has attracted widespread attention in Pakistan where the media has labelled the two the first openly acknowledged same-sex couple in the conservative Muslim country, where issues relating to homosexuality and transexuality are a taboo.

The couple had challenged the sentence and today the Supreme Court suspended their conviction and freed them on bail, their lawyer said.

''The judgement of the high court has been suspended and the Supreme Court has ordered their release,'' said lawyer Babar Awan.

The high court has still to decide whether to annul the marriage.

The two were arrested last month after the bride's family questioned whether Raj was really a man.

Raj, 31, married Shezina Tariq, 24, last year, after Raj had undergone two sex-change operations to turn himself into a man from a woman.

He said he planned to travel abroad for a third operation but a medical team appointed by the high court deemed him to be still a woman.

Raj, who is heavy-set, has a full beard and looks like a man, told reporters last month Tariq was aware of the sex-change surgery.

They said they had married because they loved each other and also because Tariq feared being forced to marry someone else.

REUTERS SM RK1812