KABUL // Eleven Afghan policemen were sentenced to one year in prison on Tuesday for failing to protect a woman who was lynched by a mob after being falsely accused of blasphemy.
It follows a landmark fast-track trial that has been both praised and criticised.
Farkhunda, 27, was savagely beaten and her body was set ablaze in broad daylight on March 19, triggering protests around the country and drawing global attention to the treatment of Afghan women.
Tuesday’s verdict comes after four Afghan men were sentenced to death and eight others were handed 16-year jail terms earlier this month after a three-day trial broadcast live on national television.
“You are sentenced ... for negligence of duty to one year in prison,” judge Safiullah Mojaddidi told the 11 defendants, including senior officers. Eight other policemen were found not guilty.
“This verdict is not final and the defendants have the right to appeal,” the Kabul primary court judge said.
Farkhunda was attacked on the banks of the Kabul River after an amulet seller, whom she had reportedly castigated for peddling superstition, falsely accused her of burning a copy of the Quran.
Forty-nine people were arrested, including 19 police officers, some of whom were shown standing by and doing nothing to stop the mob in cellphone videos recorded by bystanders.
The quick trial drew some praise in a country where where female victims of violence often have little legal recourse, but it also prompted concerns over whether due process had been followed as many of the accused did not appear to have lawyers.
Human Rights Watch said after the death sentences were awarded on May 6 that the speeds of the trial suggested the government “wants a quick and dirty process to get this case out of the headlines and move on – rather than real justice”.
“A lot of us are martyred and a lot of us are wounded everyday,” Saleh Mohammad, one of the policemen jailed on Tuesday, said before the hearing during which many of the defendants pleaded for leniency.
“We just want justice,” Mohammad told the court.
Farkhunda’s family said after the May 6 verdict that they were not happy with the large number of acquittals in a murder caught on cellphone cameras and circulated on social media.
“We have nothing more to say about this new verdict. We have already expressed our concern about the whole process,” Farkhunda’s brother Mujibullah said after the judgement.
Farkhunda’s case has become a symbol of the endemic violence that women face in Afghanistan, despite reforms since the hardline Taliban regime fell in 2001.
Last October five Afghan men were hanged over a gang rape that sparked a national outcry, despite calls from the United Nations and human rights groups for president Ashraf Ghani to stay the executions.
* Agence France-Presse