WASHINGTON: Huma Abedin, one of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s top aides, said on Monday that she was separating from her husband, Anthony Weiner, after a sex scandal similar to an earlier incident that led him to resign from the US Congress.

“After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband,” Huma Abedin said in a statement. “Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy,” Abedin added.

Abedin’s announcement follows a New York Post report that Weiner recently sent photos of his boxer-brief-clad genitals — one while he was in bed with their toddler son — via Twitter to another woman.

The photos were part of a months-long exchange between Weiner and the woman and many of the messages were sexual in nature, according to the Post report.

Weiner resigned in June 2011 from Congress, where he represented New York, followed a sexting scandal in which he accidentally posted an explicit photo of himself on his public Twitter timeline instead of via a direct message to a woman, as he had intended.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2016