A Killing Commanded by Tradition

According to Yousaf and several other witnesses, Yousaf then returned to the mosque and advised the crowd not to take justice into their own hands.

"I told them, 'Yes, this is the case and it is wrong. But the time of jihad when we had field trials is over. We have a government and the rule of law now," he said.

People in the crowd countered that they had always handled their disputes through village councils, or shuras, and expressed concern that the provincial court was too inefficient or corrupt to punish Amina, Yousaf said. Some were even aware that Afghanistan's new constitution provides that no law should contradict sharia, and they suggested that by implementing it in this case, they would be operating within the system.

Yousaf said he did not press his point.

For the rest of the day, and much of the next morning, the villagers discussed the fate of Amina and Karim.

Accounts vary of what exactly the final decision was and how it was reached.

Some say a small group, including Yousaf and the few other literate members of the community, met inside the mosque, then came out with a written order for the crowd to approve and for Amina's father to sign with his thumbprint.

Others say all 400 or so members of the shura made the decision by consensus, but that their opinion was merely meant as a recommendation to give Aslam on handing Amina back to him. They said he was free to do as he wished with her.

But no one involved disputes that the villagers were unanimous in their view that according to the dictates of Islam, the proper resolution of the case would be for Karim, as an unmarried man, to be lashed and Amina, as a married woman, to be stoned to death.

Early that afternoon, one of the mullahs went to fetch a stick with which to whip Karim as Yousaf took his leave of the villagers.

Then they watched Yousaf's turban slowly vanish over a mountain path and, along with it, Amina's last hope.

Punishment

There are two, conflicting accounts of Amina's death.

According to her great-uncle Assan, after the shura reached its verdict, a group of villagers came to the dark storage room and took her away to be stoned.

"She knew what was going to happen to her," Assan said softly. "She was screaming and sobbing."

Amina's paternal uncle, Mohammad Azim, said he watched as the villagers forced Amina down a muddy path toward a patch of soft earth along a riverbank surrounded by stones, a few yards from the edge of the village.

It was a beautiful spot, shaded by an enormous tree and offering a charming view of the village clinging to the mountainside.

It was also an ideal place for a stoning.

"They dug a hole in the ground right here," Azim said, pointing to a spot in the clearing six days later. "Then they buried Amina up to her waist, with her arms pinned by her side."

Azim said Amina's hair was covered in a head scarf, and that she was crying in terror as nearly a hundred men gathered in a circle around her and began throwing small rocks at her head.

"I couldn't watch for more than a few minutes," Azim said. Instead, he said, he walked up to Amina's parents' house and waited with them in silence during the two hours it took to kill her.

Several villagers and Amina's mother said that they, too, believe she was stoned. And a few said they had seen the bloody hole after she was removed from it.

But no one else would admit to witnessing the actual stoning, much less participating in it. And the ground where Amina was allegedly buried to her waist showed little sign of disturbance six days after her death -- possibly because, as Azim and other villagers contend, they had refilled the hole and then the river had flooded over it, or possibly because the stoning never happened.

Several other villagers, including Amina's uncle, Hashem, tell a very different story.

Hashem said the villagers handed Amina over to her uncles, including himself and Azim. Their original intention was to hang her, Hashem said. But as they were leading her away, they became increasingly angry and started to beat her with their fists.

"It was dark," he said. "All of us were striking her, and then she fainted and we saw that she was on the ground and not breathing. Maybe she had a heart attack."

Whatever the means of her death, Amina's parents said her bruised corpse was returned to them sometime between afternoon and evening prayers that day.

Amina's mother, Nessa, said she did not grieve.

"My daughter was a criminal and a sinner who brought dishonor on my name," Nessa said hotly several days later. "And I should be blamed for her death, not anyone else, because I told my tribe they could kill her. I forgave them for spilling her blood."

At about 40, Nessa has weathered skin, but the same striking raven hair and high cheekbones as Amina.

If Amina had been allowed to live, Nessa added, the shame of it would have forced Nessa to leave the only home she had ever known and a valley in which her family had lived for generations.

"But now I can walk everywhere in the village with my head high. . . . I'm happy. Extremely, extremely happy," she shouted. The tone in her voice betrayed no joy.

Then Nessa covered her face with her hands.

Early on the morning after Amina's death, her family and fellow villagers buried her in Gazon's cemetery. But they could not bury what they had done to her.

Sorrow Replaces Rage

Anis Akhgar, the representative from the Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs in Faizabad, rose from her desk to greet Badakhshan's provincial police chief.

"So," Akhgar said as the chief settled into an armchair. "From the media reports it sounds like this case out in [Gazon] is very serious. But it's been five days and we've heard nothing from the government. What are you doing about it?"

Gen. Shah Jahan Noori shifted slightly in his seat. A reporter was sitting in an adjacent chair.

"I have sent officers there today to bring back the family members for questioning," he answered quickly. "We will know more very soon."

Badakhshan is among the most unreachable corners of Afghanistan. Large swaths of it are routinely cut off by snow during the winter. In Gazon, villagers estimated that about eight women each year die in childbirth because they cannot make it over the footpath to the nearest doctor in Faizabad. And even Faizabad is connected to the rest of Afghanistan by only a narrow, unpaved road.

Yet the exchange between Akhgar and Noori offered a hint of how much is changing, even here.

In addition to Akhgar, there is a local representative of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Faizabad as well as various Afghan journalists -- all of whom quickly spread the word when the first rumors of Amina's killing surfaced. Within days, the London office of Amnesty International had issued a press release urging the Afghan government to investigate.

Badakhshan's police chief had been transferred to his post from a different province; with no local roots, he was more susceptible to outside pressure to intervene. Despite Noori's initially slow response to reports of Amina's killing, within a week after it happened he had arrested several of her relatives and sent officers to Gazon to detain several more.

Amina's father Aslam, however, was released from police custody in Faizabad after a night of questioning, on grounds that he was not directly responsible.

Just before embarking on the long walk back to Gazon, he sat on a metal chair in a room in the police station, reflecting on all that had happened in the last several days.

Unlike the feelings of his wife Nessa, Aslam's anger at Amina had by now given way to sorrow.

"I feel so sad for her. She was so young," he said, as his eyes grew glassy with tears. "I really miss her now. . . . I will miss her voice, and our conversations in the evenings."

There was much he wished he could go back and change. "If only she had told me that she did not want to go back to her husband," he said. "I would have done something about it. I would have counseled her."

But he said he harbored no doubt that she deserved to die after she admitted to committing adultery.

"There was no option. This is what Islam commands us."

His only regret was having given Amina over to the village rather than killing her himself.

"Then only I would be burned," he said. "But now all my relatives are suffering."