ISLAMABAD (AP) — A pregnant Pakistani woman beaten and stoned to death by her own family for marrying against their wishes was buried before dawn Wednesday as police pressed a manhunt for those who took part in the so-called "honor killing" outside a courthouse in downtown Lahore. 
 
 Mustafa Kharal, lawyer of pregnant woman Farzana Parveen who was stoned to death, shows her marriage certificate in Lahore, Pakistan, Wednesday, May 28, 2014. Nearly 20 members of the woman's family,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Mustafa Kharal, lawyer of pregnant woman Farzana Parveen who was stoned to death, shows the area where she was killed in Lahore, Pakistan, Wednesday, May 28, 2014. Nearly 20 members of the woman's family,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Her father was arrested shortly after the killing on Tuesday, and confessed to having killed his daughter because she had married a man of her choice, defying the family's wishes and conservative norms in the Muslim-majority country. 
 
 Farzana Parveen, 25, was buried in the presence of some 100 mourners from her husband's family at around 2 a.m. in a village graveyard in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, her husband Mohammad Iqbal said. 
 
 He said his family had chosen to bury her at night because of the gruesome state of her remains. 
 
 Iqbal, 45, said they had gone to the high court in Lahore on Tuesday to contest a criminal complaint filed against him by his father-in-law, Mohammad Azeem, who accused him of abducting his daughter. The couple was attacked as they approached the courthouse. 
 
 Authorities say the father described the attack as an "honor killing," a term used for the murder of women accused of violating the sexual mores of conservative societies. 
 
 "We loved each other. We got married on January 7, 2014 and my wife was three months' pregnant," Iqbal told The Associated Press. 
 
 "My wife wanted to tell the court that I had not kidnapped her. We were going to the court with our lawyer Mustafa Kharal, and we were near the court when three dozen people suddenly attacked us," he said in a telephone interview from his village. 
 
 He said the attackers included his wife's father, two brothers and a woman. 
 
 "I saw a young woman from my wife's family slapping her. Some people were also beating me... I tried to save my wife's life, but I failed," he said. 
 
 Arranged marriages are the norm among many conservative Pakistanis, and hundreds of women are murdered every year in so-called honor killings carried out by husbands or relatives as a punishment for alleged adultery or other illicit sexual behavior. 
 
 However, stoning in public settings is extremely rare. 
 
 Police investigator Rana Absar said Azeem surrendered hours after the attack and was in custody, and that police were searching for the others accused of taking part in the killing. 
 
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 Associated Press Writer Zaheer Babar in Lahore contributed to this report. ||||| Muhummad Iqbal, who is demanding justice after his pregnant second wife was killed by her family, admits his own crime 
 
 A Pakistani man demanding justice after his pregnant wife was murdered outside Lahore's high court this week admitted on Thursday to strangling his first wife, in an admission that is likely to focus even more attention on the prevalence of so-called "honour" killings in the country. 
 
 Muhummad Iqbal, the 45-year-old husband of Farzana Parveen, who was beaten to death by 20 male relatives on Tuesday, said he strangled his first wife in order to marry Parveen. 
 
 He avoided a prison sentence after his family used Islamic provisions of Pakistan's legal system to forgive him, precisely those he has insisted should not be available to his wife's killers. 
 
 "I was in love with Farzana and killed my first wife because of this love," he told Agence France-Presse. 
 
 Police confirmed that the killing had happened six years ago and that he was released after a "compromise" with his family. 
 
 Iqbal has also claimed that Parveen's family killed another one of their daughters some years ago. Speaking to a researcher from the Aurat Foundation, a women's rights organisation, he claimed that Parveen's father, Muhammad Azeem, had poisoned the other woman after falling out with her husband-in-law. 
 
 The foundation has been unable to confirm Iqbal's claim about a second killing. 
 
 The extraordinary twists to the affair came after Pakistan's prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, ordered an urgent investigation into the killing of Parveen, a woman who had enraged her family after marrying without their consent. 
 
 In a statement he said the crime was "totally unacceptable and must be dealt with in accordance with the law promptly". 
 
 He also ordered the chief minister of Punjab province, his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif, to take immediate action and launch an urgent investigation. 
 
 The deadly attack on Parveen, which reportedly lasted for around 15 minutes, began soon after she and Iqbal arrived at the court where she was due to testify against her father's claim that she had been kidnapped and coerced into marriage. 
 
 Her father, who is the only one of the group to be have been arrested so far, told police that his daughter had been killed because he had dishonoured her family. 
 
 Iqbal has claimed that Parveen's father only withdrew his support for their marriage after demanding more money than had initially been agreed at the start of a long engagement. Sharif's intervention followed international uproar, including a lengthy and stinging condemnation from the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, who said Pakistan must take "urgent and strong measures to put an end to the continuous stream of so-called 'honour killings' and other forms of violence against women". 
 
 She said: "The fact that she was killed on her way to court shows a serious failure by the state to provide security for someone who – given how common such killings are in Pakistan – was obviously at risk." 
 
 The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that the media had reported that nearly 900 women had been killed in "honour" crimes in 2013 alone, but the actual figure is likely to be far higher. 
 
 Until Thursday there had been little comment on the case domestically, with newspapers and television stations focussing on other stories. 
 
 One journalist, an editor of an Urdu national paper who did not want to be named, said the country's media reflected its audience. 
 
 "Although we have some educated people, most are still living in semi-tribal societies in far-flung rural areas," he said. "In a country where people are being killed every day by miscreants and militants it is not so important when one woman is killed by one husband." 
 
 Some members of the public in Lahore clearly share the media's ambivalence. 
 
 Muhammad Yaqub, a student at a private university in the city, said he understood the loss of honour for the family but disliked the brutal way the woman had been killed. 
 
 "He did some right and some wrong," he said.
– The macabre story of the pregnant woman who was stoned to death by her own family on Tuesday in Pakistan just got far more twisted: Mohammad Iqbal has revealed to CNN that he murdered his first wife so he could wed Farzana Parveen. Officials confirm that his first wife was indeed killed, some six years ago; the Guardian reports she was strangled. Iqbal's 20-something son reportedly went to police after the killing, and Iqbal spent a number of weeks on the run before being arrested. The son says his father served a year in jail; police say he was freed after reaching a "compromise" with his family as allowed by Pakistani law. Iqbal says, "I wanted to send a proposal to Farzana so I killed my wife." The timeline of the events remains a bit murky in terms of when Iqbal met Parveen, with the Guardian previously reporting the two were engaged for nearly two years before marrying this January. CNN does clarify some details about Iqbal and Parveen's involvement, per Iqbal: He says that the woman's mother died in December, and her father and brothers then changed their mind about the agreed-upon marriage, preferring she wed a cousin instead. The two opted to elope on Jan. 7, and her furious family demanded more money on top of what Iqbal had initially paid in exchange for their lives. Iqbal says his refusal to pay led to an abduction charge against him, and Parveen was planning to testify when she was attacked outside the court. According to a preliminary police report, her own brothers bashed her head with bricks.