When the Execution of Five Alleged Rapists Is a Step Back for Human Rights

In late August, a group of seven men posing as Afghan police officers pulled over a group of travelers in Paghman, on the outskirts of Kabul. The four women in the vehicle, one of whom was pregnant, were then raped within earshot of their male family members, who were tied up nearby.

On Wednesday, five men were hanged for their alleged involvement in the gang rape. Another two were sentenced to 20 years in jail. But in a country where women have historically faced enormous repression and abuse, Wednesday’s executions are an illusory kind of justice. Human rights activists, including Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, say the high-profile case represents yet another example of an Afghan trial botched by lack of due process and invasion of victims’ privacy, and that it may even have led to the execution of the wrong men.

President Hamid Karzai — on his last day in office — signed the men’s death warrants before the trials even concluded. His quick action in the case was a surprise to many observers, considering his mixed record on women’s rights while in office, but was a brazen reaction to the widespread outrage the case generated.

Although conditions for women in Afghanistan have broadly improved since the hard-line days of Taliban rule, efforts by Karzai’s government to reach a peaceful settlement with the fundamentalist group have raised fears among many women’s rights advocates that such an agreement would lead to a rollback of those gains. Moreover, Karzai sometimes waffled on women’s rights. Last year, Western governments had to pressure him into nixing a law that would have prevented relatives of victims from testifying in court — a measure that would have protected abusive husbands and families.

Heather Barr, a senior researcher on women’s rights at Human Rights Watch, said Karzai’s swift decision was politically motivated and "a welcome distraction" from Afghanistan’s messy, just-concluded, drawn-out election. Karzai, she said, seized on a story just explosive enough to compete with this year’s corruption-marred election to select his successor, while also attempting to quell public protests for women’s rights to be taken more seriously by his administration.

So it’s perhaps no great surprise that the trial of the seven men, which concluded last month, was marred by procedural errors that left serious questions about the outcome’s integrity. According to Hussein, that process "failed to comply with national and international fair trial standards." Indeed, the defendants claimed they were tortured at the hands of the police and forced to confess.

One of the victims reportedly changed her mind multiple times about her attackers’ identities, leading to questions about whether those convicted of the crime were even guilty.

During procedural hearings, the court allowed journalists to photograph the victims as they identified perpetrators from a lineup, exposing their identities to a country that sees sex crimes not only as deeply taboo but as a mark of shame on the victims.

According to Barr, the attention the violent attack garnered threatened the safety of Afghan women who regularly face physical abuse at the hands of family members and communities but are not offered support by the court. This case, which she called "atypical," was an easy opportunity for Karzai to publicly denounce rapes committed by perpetrators unknown to the victims.

Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the case’s mishandling could have been an opportunity for recently elected President Ashraf Ghani to retract Karzai’s order to execute the five suspects. And though obviously too late to change their fate, it does offer the new administration an opportunity to reevaluate other abuses in the judicial system and bring Afghan courtrooms up to international standards.

"The Paghman case demonstrates how far Afghanistan is from providing criminal suspects a fair trial," he said, referring to the area where the crime occurred. "The mishandling of this case should spur President Ghani to impose an immediate moratorium on executions, at least until Afghanistan conducts trials that meet international standards."

Wednesday marked Ghani’s 10th day in office and, despite international outcry at the executions, which took place at Pul-e-Charki prison outside of Kabul, he has yet to comment on the case.