Tuesday 23 / April / 2024
Peshawar: A Pakistani judge on Friday ordered the deportation of Sharbat Gula, the green-eyed "Afghan Girl" whose 1985 photo in National Geographic became a symbol of her country's wars, after finding her guilty of illegally obtaining a Pakistani identity card.
Gula, now in her 40s, also was sentenced to 15 days in jail and fined Rs100,000 ($955.11). She had been living in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar for years with her husband and children. Her family has said her husband died a few years ago. It was not immediately clear when Gula would be freed or deported, as she has already spent 10 days in jail, said an official at the Afghan consulate in Peshawar.
"She may spend five or four more days in Pakistan as a prisoner but we had made a special request to the Pakistani authorities to allow her to return Afghanistan either today, Friday, or Saturday," he said on condition of anonymity.
Judge Farah Jamshed of an anti-corruption and immigration court in Peshawar convicted Gula under the Foreign Act, according to a copy of the ruling. She has been in custody since her arrest on Wednesday last week on accusations she was using a forged Pakistani identity card. She had been recently shifted to a hospital with a fever and high blood pressure, said Dr Ghulam Subhani, medical superintendent of the city's Lady Reading Hospital, where her family have visited her. However, she did appear in court on Friday for the verdict.
Gula was for years the face of Afghanistan's suffering, after National Geographic published her image as a young refugee, her defiant, pained eyes staring out from an unsmiling face, framed by a shawl over her head. Her legal case comes amid Pakistani pressure to send home 2.5 million Afghan refugees, even though Afghanistan faces a bloody Taliban insurgency and would struggle to look after them.
