Article from the Sydney Morning Herald.
An Afghan man killed his daughter for allegedly committing adultery, officials said on Sunday, but denied reports that she was stoned to death.
Two officials said Mohammed Aslam killed his daughter Amina on Thursday in a remote village of Badakhshan province called Gazan, about 310 kilometres north-west of Kabul.
Media reports said the woman was stoned by villagers who caught her in the home of a man other than her husband - a punishment allowed under Islamic law and more commonly reported under the former Taliban government.
But police said the reports were mistaken and that Aslam carried out the killing alone.
"With the fundamentalists and the hardline mullahs who are in that area, these things are not impossible," said Shah Jahan Noori, the provincial police chief, told The Associated Press. "But I know that in this case she was not stoned."
Deputy Governor Haji Shamsul Rahman said the woman went to the house of a man called Mohammed Karim last Wednesday evening.
He said Karim's father had spied the couple, locked them in the house and called people from the village to witness their supposed crime.
Mohammed Aslam was then summoned.
"According to our report, when Amina's father took his daughter back home, the father killed his daughter out of shame," Rahman told AP.
Neither he nor the police chief knew exactly how she was killed.
Karim was beaten by the villagers "as a lesson to the other young people" but escaped with his life, Rahman said.
The officials said a team was on its way to the village to detain Mohammed Aslam, Mohammed Karim, Karim's father and the woman's husband, who had recently returned from Iran.
Noori said a woman had been stoned to death in the same village in the 1990s, when the Taliban ruled much of Afghanistan - but not the far north-west where this week's slaying occurred.
"People seem to assume because it happened once, it must have happened again," Noori said. "But we have a new government now in Afghanistan, and the judges, not the people, should decide who was at fault."
I get the feeling that some of these people think that as long as she wasn't stoned, the rest is ok. I know, it's a different culture. The truth is, it's outright barbarism.
3 comments:
I don't know, there are times that I think Islamic law is good. There would be a lot less crime in this country if criminals were actually punished. Parole doesn't count, but hey, loose a hand? That means something. I am surprised, however, that they went after the man as well, that's unusual, it's usually just the woman they attempt to kill. Of course I don't agree with it, but there are times it's good food for thought.
I agree that our justice system is in need of fixing. The objective should be to get to the truth, not to see who can "catch" the other side with some tricky maneuver. We should not let guilty people go because of a technicality.
Think about the whole business of reading people their rights. You should know your rights as part of your duty as a citizen or a legal visitor to this country.
Your previous criminal history should be admissible, it is relevant.
I'm not into stoning or amputation but I am in favor of capital punishment for crimes of violence.However, it shouldn't take 10 years or more to happen.
Agreed. I am not in favor of the extreme punishments rendered by Islamic law; I just wonder how much it truly deters criminal behavior.
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