An unnamed woman, wrapped head to toe in a blue burqa, was dragged across a soccer field and shot in front of 30,000 spectators. Channel 4’s award-winning documentary “Under the Veil”, which aired in June 2001, captures this haunting portrait of Taliban justice in secret. The woman is Zarmina, 35, mother of seven. In Dispatches’ new film, Unveiled, Carla Garapedian travels to Afghanistan to find her story and see if women’s lives have improved since the fall of the Taliban.
After a secret trial, Zarmina was jailed along with her six-month-old twins. They were locked in a room for three years. She admitted that her husband Alozai found her adulterous and said: “He said: ‘Tomorrow I will go to the Taliban and they will stone you.’ I was scared that night. I hit him on the head with a hammer.
Money could have saved Zarmina’s life. The Supreme Court’s final ruling said her life could be spared if she paid 10,000 dirhams ($8,000) for her fatherless seven children. But she has no money. Under Taliban law, Zarmina was sentenced by her own children. Children regularly participate in Taliban justice and witness executions. Alozai’s brother took the couple’s children to court. “They used to beat the children and say their mother killed them,” said Zarmina’s mother.
