Women who had their husbands imprisoned for abusing or kidnapping them were given divorces by Nabila while she served as a judge on Afghanistan’s Supreme Court, according to her. She claims that several of the guys threatened to murder her once they had completed their sentences.
Hundreds of detainees were released in the middle of August, when the Taliban surged into Kabul and took control of the city. According to the judge, among those arrested were those who had previously been convicted in Nabila’s courtroom. Her complete name has been omitted, as has the names of the other women who were interviewed for this article, out of respect for their privacy.
Nabila said that she started getting death threats from previous inmates within a few days after being released. She moved out of her Kabul home and into hiding while she looked for a way to flee Afghanistan with her husband and three small children, who were with her at the time.
Because of her dread of the released inmates, Nabila stated over the phone from a safe house: “I lost my job, and now I can’t even walk outside or do anything freely because I fear these freed criminals.” “Everyone in Afghanistan, particularly female judges, faces a bleak future,” says the author.
According to the International Association of Women Justices, more than 200 female judges are still serving in Afghanistan, many of whom are under danger or have fled the country. According to many former judges, Taliban authorities have obtained their personal information from court records, and some of their bank accounts have been blocked as a result.
According to Susan Glazebrook, head of the judges’ union and a justice of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, “They are women who had the effrontery to sit in judgement on males.”
Another example of the Taliban’s deliberate undoing of the achievements achieved by women over the course of the last two decades is the predicament of female judges and attorneys in Afghanistan. Female judges and attorneys have resigned from their positions as a result of Taliban pressure, thereby wiping out one of the most significant accomplishments of the United States and its allies since 2001.
Non-stop worry that they or their loved ones would be hunted down and murdered has forced the ladies to quit their employment.
The ladies challenged a judicial system that favoured husbands by giving divorces to Afghan wives who, in many instances, would have otherwise been condemned to remain in violent marriages under the old system. Former attorneys and judges who defended abused women or prosecuted cases against individuals suspected of beating, kidnapping, or raping women and girls are among those who have gone into hiding in recent years.
‘Behista,’ a 25-year-old former defence lawyer who specialised in representing victims of domestic violence, claimed she had not left her Kabul house since the Taliban seized power on Aug. 15. In order to escape Afghanistan, she is attempting to do so with her mother and two brothers, one of whom is a former Afghan army soldier, according to her.
Feminist judges and attorneys have been intimidated or assaulted in the past, even before the Taliban took control the country. It was on their way to work in Kabul in January when two female justices from the Afghan Supreme Court were shot and murdered by a gunman.
