11 Year Old Has Spent Her Life In Prison, Her Crime; Loving Her Mother

Nangarhar provincial prison, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, is a place many children are born and live till they're 18 without having committing a crime.

Her mother, Shirin Gul, is a convicted serial killer, and under Afghanistan rules and regulations she can keep her daughter until she turns 18.

Meena was birthed and nursed there, and in her lifetime in this prison she has gotten chicken pox, mumps, and measles. Despite her environment, she somehow manages to keep a smile on her face and the soft touch of a child, not one who has been confined to a compound surrounded by concrete walls and barbed wired fences.

A picture of Meena and her mother Shirin Gul.

Meena has never been outside the prison and knows nothing of the world besides the stories her mother has told her. She has never seen a television set, has never heard music being played through the radio, nor has she ever been visited by someone outside the prison.

As the story goes, Shirin Gul was working as a prostitute who brought her clients home and fed them drugged kebabs. As some of them passed out from the drug infused kebabs, her family members robbed, murdered, and then nonchalantly bury them in the yards of their two family homes.

According to Shirin Gul, her husband Rahmatullah is the one who committed the crimes. Legally Rahmatullah isn't her husband, but along with husband and wife, her son, and few other family members were convicted for their acts in the murder and robberies of 27 Afghan men in the years of 2001 - 2004.

Everyone in the family was sentenced to death and all died by hanging besides Shirin Gul. Her hanging was delayed due to the fact she got pregnant while in prison custody. Some say it was her way of escaping death. After giving birth to Meena, her sentence was reduced to life in prison by Hamid Karzai, president at the time.

Shirin Gul says she only confessed to the crimes because she was being tortured and felt that her death was surely better than the abuse she was going through.

Unfortunately she has no living relatives so young Meena can't leave the prison even if her mother allowed it. Gul says she has so many enemies out in the real world she wouldn't sleep well at nights knowing her daughter is outside her reach. While being interviewed, Shirin Gul yelled at reporters to send message to the United States president to do something about her daughter's situation as well as her own by speaking to Ashraf Ghani, president of Afghanistan.

Meena is one of 36 children jailed with their mothers, among 42 women in all.

Article from The New York Times down below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/world/asia/afghanistan-children-prison.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront