The number of women jailed for murder has been increasing every year reports Sohaila Weda Khamosh. More than a quarter of the 700 women in prison are serving murder sentences.
The number of women jailed for murder has been increasing every year reports Sohaila Weda Khamosh. More than a quarter of the 700 women in prison are serving murder sentences.Najeeya, 22, is in Pol-e-Khumri central jail with her two sons, aged three and four years. She is charged with the murder of her husband. “Three years back my husband was killed when he returned from Iran. My brother-in-law and I were arrested,” she told Killid in an interview. “It was evening. There was a knock and my husband opened the door. A man told him to come out. He disappeared. Then his dead body was found.”
The young woman from Baghlan province insists she is innocent. But Mohammad Jalal, the head of education in Pol-e-Khumri prison says, “The government never puts anyone in jail without reason.”
The prosecution’s case rests on the results of an investigation, and evidence provided by two witnesses. Najeeya was accused of intimate relations with her brother-in-law while her husband was away in Iran. On his return the two plotted his murder. His body was found in the yard of her house by the police.
Killid’s investigation reveals that the number of women in prison for murder has been rising.
General Amir Mohammad Jamshed, chief of Afghan Prison and Detention Centres, says more than a quarter of the 700 women in prison are serving murder sentences. There are 34 prisons in the country with a total of 24,613 inmates.
“The number of prisoners increases every year by 24 percent. The number of women charged with murder shows much increase. Murder tops the crimes by women,” he told Killid in an interview.
Forced marriages
Women have also been jailed in cases of adultery, robbery, abduction, and narcotics smuggling. “The crimes have causes,” General Jamshed says. Among the reasons he lists the practice of forced marriages and the vast disparity in age between husband and wife. “Poverty can be counted as the cause of problems in the community,” he adds.
Most crimes of murder involving women are found in a few provinces: Herat and the Northern Provinces like Balkh, Baghlan and Jawzjan.
Sayera, an inmate of Pol-e-Khumri jail is 60 years old. She says her daughter-in-law committed suicide after two years of marriage. She set herself aflame after pouring oil on herself. “Many of our family members were jailed on the accusation of killing her. Some people were released. I have been in prison for one and a half years. I am accused of killing my daughter-in-law and burning her body. That is a lie. I am innocent.”
The woman insists her neighbours have given false evidence. Her daughter-in-law she says had psychological problems.
Nooria (not her real name) is in prison in a provincial jail. She says she killed her brother-in-law in defence. “My husband lived out of the country. I killed my brother-in-law because he had an evil eye on me in my husband’s absence,” she says.
She admits she assaulted her brother-in-law with a kitchen knife because he was going to sexually assault her. Her brother-in-law had beaten her many times, and wanted her to have a sex with him, she adds.
Scarred by violence
General Abdullah Azizi, chief of Balkh prison, told Killid, there were 894 prisoners including 62 women. According to him, 20 women prisoners were serving murder sentences.
However, Mohammad Zaher Zaher, the head of Criminal Investigations Department of Kabul province, believes there is no significant increase in the rate of crime. “The crime figures are normal. No difference, either in terms of increasing or decreasing has been seen in the past few years.”
He says the department has investigated only three murder crimes by women, which is significantly less than crimes perpetrated by men.
In his opinion women turn criminals out of “compulsion and life problems”. He believes women criminals “live with violent men or are victims of violence by men”. He says the “level of violence against women is high but still women (generally) are compassionate … (if they) perpetrate crime (it is) due to compulsion and life problems.”
AIHRC’s (Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission) Parween Rahimi is in charge of the Women’s Rights Support Department in the regional office. She says that since the start of the year 52 women are in jails in three central provinces – Parwan, Kabul and Kapisa – on charges of murder. Most of the killings were acts of revenge, or when the accused felt she had no other recourse. “The violence is so intense the women cannot bear it. So they kill their husbands or other members of his family.”
According to Rahimi, there are also cases where a husband addicted to narcotics has taken his life, and his wife has been accused of murder by his family. She blames forced marriages in Afghanistan as being at the root of social problems faced by women.
The murders are usually not premeditated, feels Fawzia Amini, head of the Rights Department in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. “The murder takes place suddenly,” she says. She believes women face all kinds of oppression that affect them psychologically. There is widespread violence in the family and oppressive social customs like polygamy.
“The very stressful life makes people quarrelsome and creates psychological problems,” says Spozhmai Oria, lecturer of psychology in Kabul University. Years of conflict have scarred people, she adds. “It is necessary to acknowledge that people have psychological problems.”
