1999: Zarmeena
4 comments November 16th, 2010 Headsman
On this date in 1999,* a burka-clad woman known only as Zarmeena (alternatively, Zarmina … or in some early reports, Zareena) was executed by gunshot in Kabul’s Ghazi Sports Stadium.
This first public execution of a woman under the Taliban — ordered because she had supposedly killed her husband** — was secretly filmed by a Revolutionary Association of the Woman of Afghanistan activist smuggling a camera under her own burka.
Caution: This video is (in)famous enough, thanks to its inclusion in the documentary Beneath the Veil, that you’ve probably already seen it. But it’s still a graphic image of a woman shot through the head at point-blank range. (From around 2:20)
The book With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan expands somewhat on RAWA’s calculations on this occasion, on the young activist who pulled off the risky filming, and on the purportedly hostile-to-the-Taliban crowd reaction.
* Some web resources give Nov. 17 as the date, but all the (admittedly limited) primary documentation available appears to me to point definitively to Nov. 16. RAWA, which shot the video, posts it with this date; wire copy that ran in western papers on Nov. 16 (here) and Nov. 17 (here) attributed the execution to Nov. 16.
** It’s not clear to me how dependable the information about the executee is; it’s said that she had been in prison well over a year but was rather suddenly executed for the Taliban’s exigent reasons of public intimidation. It’s also said that her husband’s family forgave her — which, under sharia as practiced by, e.g., Saudi Arabia, ought to have spared her life — and that Zarmeena herself may not have understood or believed that she was actually going to be executed until the very last moment.
On this day..
- 1594: Edward Osbaldeston - 2019
- 1888: Not Sarah J. Robinson - 2018
- 1880: Alexander Kvyatkovsky and Andrei Presnyakov, Narodnaya Volya terrorists - 2017
- 1747: Thomas Fuller, Hawkhurst Gang smuggler - 2016
- 1915: The Ghadar Mutineers - 2015
- 1700: Jamie Macpherson, Highlander - 2014
- 1688: Goodwife Ann Glover, Salem trial run - 2013
- 1724: Willem Mons, head grafter - 2012
- 1724: Jack Sheppard, celebrity escape artist - 2011
- 1885: Louis Riel, Metis leader - 2009
- 1869: Hamiora Pere, Maori "traitor" to the Queen - 2008
- 1491: Eight current and converted Jews at an auto de fe - 2007
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Afghanistan,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,History,Known But To God,Mature Content,Milestones,Murder,Public Executions,Shot,Women
Tags: 1990s, 1999, kabul, november 16, rawa, sharia, stadiums, taliban
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