The death penalty of the sixth convict in the attack on Mukhtiar Mai, who went on to become a rights campaigner, was commuted to life imprisonment by a two-member bench of the high court in the central city of Multan.

"Justice has been done," defence lawyer Mohammad Salim told AFP.

Mai, in her early 30s, was raped for more than an hour in the village of Meerwala in Punjab province in June 2002, as punishment for her brother's alleged affair with a woman of a powerful rival clan.

The case shocked the country and sparked international outrage. Later the same year an anti-terrorist court in Punjab province sentenced six men to death by hanging and acquitted another eight defendants.

Defence lawyers said Multan high court Thursday had acquitted convicts Ghulam Farid, Fayyaz Hussain, Faiz Baksh, Ramzan Bhojar and Allah Ditta Mastoi, while Abdul Khaliq was given life imprisonment.

"The verdict of the anti-terrorism court in August 2002 was largely influenced by media hype and government pressure," lawyer Salim said.

Four of those originally sentenced to death were found guilty of participating in the rape itself. The other two were members of the tribal jury.

Women in Pakistan and other parts of South Asia are often subject to brutal "honour punishments", from acid-burning to rape and murder, paying for the alleged crimes of relatives.

After the rape, Mai embarked on a mission to improve girls' education in Pakistan, where 72 percent of women are illiterate, using her compensation money to set up her district's first ever school for girls.