Girl, 10, who refused to carry out suicide mission fears family will strap another bomb to her if she goes home
Associated Press | January 8, 2014 1:17 PM ET
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AFP/Getty ImagesSpozhmai, 10, was allegedly about to be used by the Taliban as a suicide bomber, is pictured at a police office in Helmand province. Afghan police on Jan. 6 searched for a Taliban commander who allegedly forced his 10-year-old sister to wear an explosives-packed vest for an aborted suicide attack in the southern province of Helmand.
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The 10-year-old girl has petitioned Afghanistan’s president to help her find a safe, new home days after her brother — a Taliban commander — allegedly strapped an explosives-packed vest to her.
In an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, the girl known as Spozhmai says she fears that if she returns to her family she again will be asked to blow herself up in a suicide bombing attack. She asked Karzai to put her “in a good place.”
We never do this, especially with girls
Spozhmai, who authorities say is 10, was detained by police Monday after what they described as a botched attempt to blow up a police checkpoint in southern Khan Nishin district. She is in protective custody in the Helmand provincial capital Lashkargah. Police continue to search for the girl’s brother, who they say escaped with the suicide vest.
NOOR MOHAMMAD/AFP/Getty ImagesSpozhmai, 10, sits in a police office in Helmand province on Jan. 6, 2014.
Border police in the southern Afghan province arrested the girl’s father, Abdul Ghfar, and were searching for the brother, a police commander said. The girl said her brother is a Taliban commander.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahamdi denied any involvement in the alleged plot, which he dismissed as government propaganda.
“We never do this, especially with girls,” he said.
Spozhmai spoke to journalists Monday after Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry announced her detention and said she was just 10 years old.
Addressing television cameras, she said her brother, named Zahir, told her to approach a checkpoint and ask the deputy commander for a ride with him to neighbouring Kunar province.
“I agreed, then he attached the vest on my body and told me to spend the night here and leave in the morning,” she said.
But after she and her brother spent the night somewhere, she said she had second thoughts.
“I said I won’t go, then he took off the vest and tried to convince me that they [police] will die and I will remain alive,” Spozhmai said. She said her brother then fled with the vest.
Police said they believed her account.
“The guy named Zahir had the suicide vest and escaped, but she was still there and when our commander of the battalion heard her voice, they surrounded the area and brought this girl to their base, and we all heard her story on how she was forced into this action,” Col. Hamidullah Sediqi said.
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the Taliban, saying that “using a child as a suicide bomber is un-Islamic and goes against Afghan culture and beliefs.”
Although the Taliban deny it, human rights groups say the insurgent group has occasionally dispatched children for suicide bombings. But girls have been used only rarely, according to Heather Barr, Afghanistan senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“There have been very few documented cases of girls being involved in suicide bomb attacks,” Barr said. According to Human Rights Watch, an 8-year-old girl was killed in central Uruzgan province in 2011 when a bag of explosives the Taliban instructed her to carry to a police checkpoint detonated.
With files from the Associated Press, National Post |
