KABUL // An Afghan cleric, said to be aged around 60, has been arrested after marrying a six-year-old girl whose family says she was abducted.
Mohammad Karim, who was being held in the central province of Ghor province, claimed her parents gave him the girl as a “religious offering”.
But officials cited the girl’s family on Friday as saying that she was abducted from the western province of Herat, which borders Iran.
“This girl does not speak, but repeats only one thing: ‘I am afraid of this man’,” said Masoom Anwari, head of the women affairs department in Ghor.
The girl is currently in a woman’s shelter in Ghor and her parents are on their way to the province to collect her, the local governor’s office said.
“Karim has been jailed and our investigation is ongoing,” said Abdul Hai Khatibi, the governor’s spokesman.
The arrest comes just days after a 14-year-old pregnant girl was burned to death in Ghor.
The family of that girl, Zahra, said she was tortured and set alight by her husband’s family. But relatives of the teenager’s husband insisted her death was by self-immolation.
The incidents highlight rising cases of child marriages in Afghanistan.
“In some regions because of insecurity and poverty the families marry off their daughters at a very early age to get rid of them,” said Sima Samar, head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Afghan civil law sets the legal age of marriage at 16 for girls, yet 15 per cent of Afghan women under 50 were married before their 15th birthday and almost half were married before the age of 18, according to Save the Children.
“So many children who are married off at a young age are deprived of their right to education, safety and the ability to make choices about their future,” the charity said.
“This is such a fundamental breach of a child’s basic rights.”
* Agence France-Presse