Afghan women in Kabul prison over 'moral' crimes

KABUL (AP) — Lost and alone in a strange city Mariam called the only person she knew, her husband's cousin. She worried he wouldn't help her because she had left her home in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province, fleeting to the capital Kabul to escape his relentless and increasingly vicious beatings. But he promised to help. Too busy to come himself he sent a friend who took her to "some house", held a gun to her head and raped her.

Finished with her he settled in front of a TV set, the gun on a table by his side. Choosing her moment, Mariam picked up the gun shot her assailant in the head and turned the gun on herself.

"Three days later I woke up in the hospital," she said, slowly, shyly removing a scarf from her head to reveal a partially shaved head and a long jagged scar that ran almost the length of her head where the bullet grazed her scalp.

From the hospital Mariam was sent to a police station and from there to Badam Bagh, Afghanistan's central women's prison where she told her story to The Associated Press. For the past three months Mariam has been waiting to find out why she is in jail, the charges and when she can leave.

"I haven't gone to court. I am just waiting."

Hugging a ratty brown sweater to protect her from the damp cold of the prison, Mariam is one of 202 women living in the six- year- old jail. The majority of the women packed are serving sentences of up to seven years for leaving their husbands, refusing to accept a marriage arranged by their parents, or choosing to leave their parent's home with a man of their choice __ all so-called "moral" crimes, says the prison's director general Zaref Jan Naebi.

Some of the women were jailed while pregnant, others with their small children. Naebi says there are 62 children living with their imprisoned mothers, sharing the same grey steel bunk-beds, napping in the afternoon hidden behind a sheet draped from an upper bunk, oblivious to the chatter and the crackling noises from the small fussy television sets shoved off to one side of the rooms.

The Taliban were thrown out 12 years ago ending five years of rule and regressive laws that enforced a tribal tradition and culture more than religious compulsions denying girls schools, ordering women to stay indoors unless accompanied by a male, and in some of the more severe cases even blackening the first story windows so prying eyes could not see women within. Women were forced to wear the all- encompassing burqa or suffer a public beating.

In the first years after the Taliban's December 2001 removal strides seemed to be made for women, schools opened, women came out of their house, many still in the burqas but appearing on television and getting elected to Parliament.

But women's activists in Kabul say within a few years of the Taliban's ouster the ball was dropped, interest waned and even President Hamid Karzai began making statements that harkened back to the Taliban rule saying women really should be accompanied by a man while outside their home. A new law was enacted called the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW), but its implementation is erratic and rare, says the United Nations Assistance Mission on Afghanistan, whose human rights arm monitors such things.

An UNAMA report issued in December last year says it is difficult to even get information about violence against women from the authorities partially because they don't want to look bad if it showed that little was being done and little, if any, official documentation on violence against women exists.

While it might not be against the law to run away or escape a forced marriage, the courts routinely convict women fleeing abusive homes with "the intent to commit zina (or adultery)" which are most often simply referred to as "moral crimes," says the report.

"Perceptions toward women are still the same in most places, tribal laws are the only laws followed and in most places nothing has changed in the basics of women's lives. There are policies and papers and even laws but nothing has changed," said Zubaida Akbar whose volunteer Haider organization fights for women's rights and sends lawyers and aid workers to the women's prison to defend the inmates in court.

In the overwhelmingly male dominated legal system, Akbar said even when an inmate gets in front of the judge, "he says 'it is her husband, she should go back and make it work. It is her fault and not her place to leave him __ not in our society.'"

Afghanistan remains a deeply conservative society, where men dominate and tribal jirgas still hand out rulings that offer girls and women to settle debts and disputes.

Surrounded by a high fence topped with razor wire, there is one small patch of open space where children being kept with their mothers in Badam Bagh prison play. Nearby women hang out their laundry. The two story building is only six years old but already it is grimy and neglected looking. On balconies obscured by mesh and steel bars women sit and smoke.

Naebi said inmates attend a variety of classes during the week, ranging from basic literacy, to crafts and sewing, with the intention of giving the women a skill once they leave the prison.

Inside the stark building, six people often share a small room that is their cell. Three sets of bunk-beds line the walls. In some of the beds infants tucked under grimy blankets sleep while their mothers tell their story.

Nuria, dressed in maroon colored clothes from head to toe, quieted her infant boy as she told of going to court to demand a divorce from a husband she was forced by her parents to marry. Defiant even in prison, Nuria said "I wanted to get a divorce but he wouldn't let me go. I never wanted to marry him. I loved someone else but my father made me. He threatened to kill me if I didn't."

Nuria had pleaded with her father before her marriage, begging to marry another.

"When I went to court for the divorce, instead of giving me a divorce, they charged me with running away," she said. The man she wanted to marry was also charged and is now serving time in Afghanistan's notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison, one of the country's largest prisons, overcrowded and with a reputation over the last several decades of maltreatment.

At the time she went to court Nuria didn't know she was pregnant. She gave birth to her son in jail. Although the baby is her husband, who has offered to have the courts set her free if she returns home, Nuria said she has refused.

"He wants me to come home now because I have his son but I said 'no. I will wait until my sentence is up,'" in eight months, she said.

Twenty seven year old Adia left her husband, a drug addict, seeking shelter with her parents. They wanted her to return to her husband, who followed her demanding she return.

"Instead I escaped with another man but it wasn't a romance. I was desperate to get away and he said he would help me but he didn't he just left me. I went to the court. I was angry. I wanted him charged and my husband charged but instead they charged me and sentenced me to six years. I went back to court to appeal the conviction and this time I was sentenced to seven and a half years."

Seven months pregnant, Adia will have her baby in jail. Fauzia isn't sure of her age. She looks to be early 60s. She stares out of the prison bars. Already seven years in jail, Fauzia will serve a 17 year sentence for killing her husband and her daughter in law. Expressionless she tells her story, rolls up her sleeve to display a mangled elbow where her husband had smashed her with a stick. She was his fourth wife.

"I was in one room. I came into the next room and they were there having sexual relations. I found a big knife and killed them both."

Zubeida, the women's activist, said despite what she calls a veneer of change, little is different for most Afghan women.

"We have the appearance of everything, but when you dig in deep down below the surface nothing fundamentally has changed. It has been tough. It has been really tough," she said.

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NC man says he tried to save kids buried in dirt

In this image made from video and provided by WSOC-TV Charlotte, authorities work to rescue two children at a construction site, Sunday, April 7, 2013, in Stanley, N.C. Two television stations are reporting that two children are trapped under a home under construction in Lincoln County near Charlotte. WBTV and WSOC report firefighters from several places, including Charlotte, are on the scene Sunday night. (AP Photo/WSOC TV)

Video: Crews find bodies of 2 NC children trapped in dirt

STANLEY, N.C. (AP) — For Jordan Arwood, the images return in waves. A wall of dirt collapsing and burying his 6-year-old daughter and her 7-year-old cousin in a pit he was working on. Rescue workers frantically pulling the children from thick red clay. Their lifeless bodies placed in the back of an ambulance.

"When she came out of the hole she was so cold," Arwood, of Stanley, N.C., told The Associated Press in his first news media interview. "I just wanted for her to be warm. I just wanted to put my arms around her and tell her she would be safe....I promised her I'd keep her safe. I promised them I'd keep them safe and warm. I broke that promise."

The 31-year-old Arwood was operating a backhoe Sunday night in the pit when the walls caved in on the children. The bodies of the two young cousins, Chloe Jade Arwood and James Levi Caldwell, were dug out Monday morning.

Arwood is the girl's father. His parents, Nancy and Ken Caldwell, had adopted the boy, his twin sister Jazmin and 9-year-old brother Josiah. Arwood lives next to his parents and the pit was on his property.

Arwood told the AP he reached out to save the children but they were just outside his grasp. He said he dug faster and faster trying to rescue them until he couldn't breathe.

"When the wall came down, I kept grabbing what was in front of me — grabbing enough dirt, grabbing boulders. ... I wasn't going to stop until I pulled them out. But I couldn't save them," he said, sobbing.

He paused for a moment.

"I wish it was me,' he said.

Lincoln County Sheriff's Office Detective Lt. Tim Johnson said investigators were interviewing family members and neighbors about the case. When they finished, they planned to present their findings to the district attorney's office.

Investigators described the pit as 20 feet by 20 feet, with a sloped entrance leading down to the 24-foot bottom. The children were at the bottom of the pit retrieving a child-sized pickaxe when the walls fell in on them. No permits had been issued for Arwood to dig on the site.

Johnson said investigators still don't know why Arwood was digging the hole and that people have speculated that the pit was everything from a "doomsday bunker" to an underground structure for "illegal activity," such as growing marijuana.

But Arwood said he was building a rammed earth home, an ancient building method where dirt is used to shape the foundation. Arwood said he had been digging for three months.

Sheriff's deputies on Monday removed guns and a marijuana plant from Arwood's mobile home. Arwood is a felon who is not allowed to have guns. He was convicted in 2003 for possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell.

Dion Burleson, spokesman for the Denver Fire Department, which responded to collapse, said crews filled in the pit Monday.

Arwood said he didn't expect the walls to collapse. And late Tuesday afternoon, Arwood walked to the site of the pit and pointed to the spot where his daughter and James had been buried under the dirt.

He reached down and sifted the dirt between the fingers of his right hand. Then he punched the soil in frustration.

As the walls fell in, he recalled, the children were running to get away. He was within inches of grabbing his daughter's hand. But she disappeared under a surge of dirt. Now he's haunted by the memories.

"I want to wake up. I just want to wake up," he said.

Recalling the children, his eyes brighten. They were always running around together — the best of friends.

And his parents' house was filled with laughter. He taught his daughter and James how to ride four-wheelers in the backyard.

Arwood was like a big brother to James.

"How many times did I have to tell him to brush his teeth? I'll never be able to tell him again, 'Go brush your teeth, brush your hair.' That was the first thing he did in the morning," he said.

On Tuesday, friends and family in this tight-knit rural community came by to offer their condolences. They brought food to the family.

Ken Caldwell sat on a couch, surrounded by photos of his grandchildren. Nearby was a white karate suit. James is going to be buried in it. He was just a few days shy of taking a test for his orange belt.

Caldwell, who worked 34 years in a steel fabrication plant, recalled reading Tom Swift books every night to James, a bright, energetic first-grader with a big smile.

He loved his grandmother, who would tuck him in every night. "After she tucked him in, he would stick out his leg out of the covers and say, "Grandma, my foot's not covered.'"

Chloe was always running around the house and jumping in his lap.

"She's so beautiful," he said.

When he saw the children's bodies in the ambulance, he said he placed his hands on them and asked God to "bring them back."

While his prayers went unanswered, his faith is still strong — and he's going to use it to carry him through the tough times.

"You have to trust the Lord," he said. "I'm just grateful I had time to spend with my grandkids."

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Mother suspected of killing 3 newborns in Poland

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Prosecutors in northern Poland on Wednesday were questioning a woman suspected of killing her three newborn boys whose bodies were found in the family's freezer.

Police spokesman Slawomir Nojman said that the woman, identified as 41-year-old Lucyna D. from the northern town of Lubawa, has confessed to killing the infants. If convicted of homicide, the woman could face a life sentence.

The woman said she kept the bodies in the freezer because she "could not part from them," said police spokeswoman Anna Fic.

Forensic examinations are seeking to determine the cause of death, and whether the babies were born alive — both crucial elements for prosecutors to prove in a court case.

The woman's husband was also arrested and was being questioned.

The couple was arrested late Tuesday after a neighbor alerted police to her suspicions when she saw no baby resulting from Lucyna D.'s pregnancy. Police searched the home and found the bodies in the freezer.

The couple have four children aged between 6 and 22, who were being cared for by relatives following the arrest of the parents.

In November, another 41-year-old woman, identified as Beata Z., was arrested in northeastern Poland on suspicion of killing at least five of her newborn babies. Bodies of two boys and two girls have been confirmed as her children. Investigators are still looking for another body and they suspect that a sixth newborn was also killed.