APSN | Afghan woman's torturers set free

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Afghan woman's torturers set free

New York Times - July 5, 2013

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Matthew Rosenberg – A court has reversed the convictions of three Afghans jailed for torturing a young relative who had refused to become a prostitute, alarming activists who had celebrated the guilty verdicts as a warning to all those who would seek to reverse the strides made by Afghan women in the past 12 years.

A family had bought the young woman, Sahar Gul, from her stepbrother for $US5000 and had forced her to marry in 2011, when she was just 13 or 14.

When she refused to consummate the marriage, her in-laws locked her in a basement, where they burned her with hot wires, pulled out her fingernails and twisted her skin with pliers for months.

She was discovered in December 2011 curled up in a dank and dark corner of the cellar and badly malnourished. Gul now lives in a shelter in Kabul.

Her case attracted widespread attention in Afghanistan and abroad. Three of her in-laws were convicted last year of attempted murder, and each was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The convictions were upheld on appeal, although her husband, who is in his 30s, remains at large.

Last month, however, in a decision that received little publicity, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the appeals court, saying that the violence appeared to warrant convictions for assault, not attempted murder, according to lawyers for the defendants.

The appeals court voided the convictions and ordered the defendants – Gul's mother-in-law, sister-in-law and father-in-law – be set free.

Afghan women's rights activists reacted with alarm and said they would press to have the three defendants retried.

"There's smoke coming out of my hair. I am so angry," said Manizha Naderi, the executive director of Women for Afghan Women. "This poor girl was in the basement for months. If she wasn't rescued, she would be dead."