An Afghan woman immortalised on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985 as a green-eyed 12-year-old has been arrested in Pakistan for holding fake identity papers, officials say.
Sharbat Gula could face a fine and up to 14 years in jail.
Officials say she was arrested by Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) after a two-year probe in Peshawar, near the Afghan border.
Pakistan recently launched a crackdown against fake IDs.
Mrs Gula allegedly applied for an identity card in April 2014, using the name Sharbat Bibi. If the fraud claims are true, she is one of thousands of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan who have tried to dodge its computerised system.
Recent UN figures show that Pakistan hosts 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees. A further one million unregistered refugees are believed to be in the country.
The celebrated "Afghan girl" picture of Mrs Gula was taken in 1984 in a refugee camp in north-west Pakistan, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It led to one of the most recognisable magazine covers ever printed. Cont.
Story from - BBC News
No comments:
Post a Comment