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. ||||| Story highlights Husband of slain woman says he killed his first wife 
 
 Pakistani Prime Minister orders full report on the killing 
 
 Farzana Parveen, 3 months pregnant, was stoned Tuesday in a public area of a big city 
 
 Her father, brothers and cousins participated in the stoning 
 
 The husband of Farzana Parveen, the Pakistani woman stoned to death for refusing to participate in an arranged marriage, told CNN he killed his first wife so he could marry Parveen. 
 
 Authorities said the first wife was killed six years ago. 
 
 "I wanted to send a proposal to Farzana, so I killed my wife," Mohammad Iqbal said Thursday in an interview with CNN. 
 
 Zulfiqar Hameed, district inspector general for the Punjab police, said Iqbal's son from the first marriage alerted police to the slaying six years ago. 
 
 Iqbal was arrested but later released on bail because his son forgave him, Hameed said. 
 
 JUST WATCHED Fighting honor killings in Muslim world Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Fighting honor killings in Muslim world 05:19 
 
 JUST WATCHED Pregnant Pakistani woman stoned to death Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Pregnant Pakistani woman stoned to death 02:00 
 
 JUST WATCHED Human rights activist speaks on violence Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Human rights activist speaks on violence 01:20 
 
 The son, Aurengzeb, who is in his 20s, confirmed his father's statements to CNN. He said his father served a year in jail. 
 
 Parveen, who was three months pregnant, was beaten to death with bricks Tuesday in the eastern city of Lahore by a group of about 20 people, including her brothers, father and cousin, police said. Police have arrested Parveen's father and are searching for the other killers in this all-too-common crime. 
 
 Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has requested that Punjab's chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, submit a report on the incident. 
 
 The United Nations estimates 5,000 women are murdered worldwide by family members each year in "honor killings," so named because the woman's actions are considered to have brought shame on her family. But women's advocacy groups say the crime is underreported and the figure could be around 20,000 a year. 
 
 "Most 'honor' crimes can be traced to inflexible and discriminatory attitudes about women's roles, especially around sexuality," said Rothna Begum of Human Rights Watch. "Women or couples seen as having brought 'dishonor' on the community face violence, which is then held out as a chilling example for others." 
 
 Most honor killings in the Middle East and Central Asia occur in rural areas. Tuesday's attack was unusual because it happened in a public area of a big city. 
 
 Iqbal, a neighbor of Parveen's family, said he and Parveen were supposed to marry, with the family's approval, last year. As part of the arrangement, Iqbal said, he'd given Parveen's father 80,000 rupees and gold jewelry. 
 
 Last December, Parveen's mother died and her father and brothers changed their minds about the marriage, Iqbal said. 
 
 The family decided Parveen, who came from a village in Punjab, should marry a cousin, police said. 
 
 Parveen, 25, and Iqbal eloped and were married January 7 in a court ceremony. He said she liked the color white and that she was a "beautiful and good wife." 
 
 "We were happy," he said, though they were constantly worried about their safety. 
 
 "She loved us," said Aurengzeb, Parveen's stepson. "She always made the most delicious meat stew for us." 
 
 The marriage enraged her family, Iqbal said, and they demanded he pay them 100,000 rupees (about $1,000) to let the couple stay alive. 
 
 Iqbal, a farmer in the village in Jurranwala, Punjab, didn't have the money. 
 
 The family had challenged Parveen's marriage to Iqbal in the courts, accusing him of abducting her. 
 
 "They left my office around 7:40 a.m.," the lawyer, Rai Ghulam Mustafa, said. "They arrived at the main gate of the High Court around 7:45 a.m. The opposite party, the family members of Farzana Parveen, had been lying in wait for her among the cars. They suddenly attacked her, repeatedly hit her with bricks and killed her." 
 
 One family member made a noose of rough cloth around her neck while her brothers smashed bricks into her skull, said Mushtaq Ahmed, a police official, citing the preliminary report on the killing. 
 
 Iqbal witnessed the attack and tried to protest, but was held back. 
 
 Police said they had arrested Parveen's father, whose name they gave only as Azeem. They said he had admitted to the killing and expressed no regret. 
 
 Senior Police Officer Umar Cheema told CNN that law enforcement agents are conducting raids in areas near the village to find the other killers. 
 
 Iqbal said nobody helped when the stoning began. People just stood around and watched. 
 
 Farzana Bari, a human rights activist based in Islamabad, said in many cases people outside the family don't step in to protect the victim "because it's a private matter." 
 
 Bari said the number of honor killings is probably much higher than studies show because many families don't report the killings, and the killers often avoid prosecution. 
 
 Under an Islamic element of Pakistani law, known as the law of Diyat, the family of a victim is allowed to forgive the perpetrator, according to the human rights commission's report. 
 
 Lawyer Maliha Zia told CNN that "blood money" is also part of criminal law in Pakistan. 
 
 In certain cases, when both parties agree to reach a financial settlement, the court can take the settlement into consideration instead of jail time. Also, the courts can order financial reparations instead of imprisonment, Zia said. 
 
 Honor-based violence has been reported in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Iraq, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Sweden, Turkey, Uganda, the United Kingdom and the United States, the U.N. said in a report titled "Global Violence Against Women in the Name of 'Honour.'" 
 
 Hameed said Iqbal was on the run for several weeks after killing his first wife and eluded arrest, and those facts would be incorporated into the report on Parveen's killing.
– 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.