Sharbat Gula will be freed on Tuesday: envoy
Afghan diplomats meet the NatGeo cover girl and assure her that she would be freed
Afghan diplomats meet the NatGeo cover girl and assure her that she would be freed. PHOTO: EXPRESS
ISLAMABAD:
Afghan diplomats on Monday met Sharbat Gula – the green-eyed Afghan woman who got world famous due to her 1985 photo on a National Geography magazine cover – and assured her that she would be freed on Tuesday.
Photographer of NatGeo’s ‘Afghan Girl’ objects to arrest
Gula, also dubbed the ‘Afghan Mona Lisa’, was arrested on October 26 from an old neighbourhood of Peshawar by a special team of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for living in Pakistan on forged identity papers.
The Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan Omar Zakhilwal said that a team of Afghan diplomats – Nasim Kakar and Abdul Hameed Jalili – met Gula in a Peshawar prison and assured that she would be ‘acquitted’.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Sunday said he had urged the FIA to facilitate the release of the Afghan woman on humanitarian grounds. The court is scheduled to hear her case on November 1.
FIA arrests NatGeo’s Afghan girl in Peshawar
Afghans say Gula belonged to Pachir Aw Agam, district in eastern Nangarhar province, bordering Pakistan. She had lost her father and mother when she was just six in a bombing by the erstwhile Soviet fighter jets during the USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan.
She had migrated to Pakistan along with her brother, three sisters and grandmother. She married Rehmat Gul, a baker near Peshawar in 1990. She has three daughters – Rubina, Zahida and Aalia.
Govt won’t oppose Sharbat Gula’s bail on humanitarian grounds
The Afghan ambassador on Friday insisted that it is not only Gula, who is accused of having a fake Pakistani identity cards but there are an estimated over 0.5 million Afghan refugees to whom the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) has issued Pakistani IDs.
“[This has happened] as per its process of which the Ministry of Interior is very well aware,” he added.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 1st , 2016.
Afghan diplomats on Monday met Sharbat Gula – the green-eyed Afghan woman who got world famous due to her 1985 photo on a National Geography magazine cover – and assured her that she would be freed on Tuesday.
Photographer of NatGeo’s ‘Afghan Girl’ objects to arrest
Gula, also dubbed the ‘Afghan Mona Lisa’, was arrested on October 26 from an old neighbourhood of Peshawar by a special team of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for living in Pakistan on forged identity papers.
The Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan Omar Zakhilwal said that a team of Afghan diplomats – Nasim Kakar and Abdul Hameed Jalili – met Gula in a Peshawar prison and assured that she would be ‘acquitted’.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Sunday said he had urged the FIA to facilitate the release of the Afghan woman on humanitarian grounds. The court is scheduled to hear her case on November 1.
FIA arrests NatGeo’s Afghan girl in Peshawar
Afghans say Gula belonged to Pachir Aw Agam, district in eastern Nangarhar province, bordering Pakistan. She had lost her father and mother when she was just six in a bombing by the erstwhile Soviet fighter jets during the USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan.
She had migrated to Pakistan along with her brother, three sisters and grandmother. She married Rehmat Gul, a baker near Peshawar in 1990. She has three daughters – Rubina, Zahida and Aalia.
Govt won’t oppose Sharbat Gula’s bail on humanitarian grounds
The Afghan ambassador on Friday insisted that it is not only Gula, who is accused of having a fake Pakistani identity cards but there are an estimated over 0.5 million Afghan refugees to whom the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) has issued Pakistani IDs.
“[This has happened] as per its process of which the Ministry of Interior is very well aware,” he added.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 1st , 2016.