Afghan woman killed by mob not guilty of buring Koran

KABUL, Afghanistan — As thousands of people gathered Sunday to bury a woman who was beaten and burned by an angry mob, Afghan officials said they found no proof that she had burned pages of the Koran as her assailants had claimed.

“We have reviewed all the evidence and have been unable to find any single iota of evidence to support claims that she had burned a Koran,” Gen. Mohammad Zahir, head of the Interior Ministry’s criminal investigation directorate, said at the woman’s funeral.

“She is completely innocent.”

Zahir’s comments followed the results of an investigation by the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs that said that charred papers found at the shrine where she was attacked Thursday were from a Persian-language prayer book — not the Koran, the Muslim scripture, which is written in Arabic.

The death of the 28-year-old woman, identified only by her first name, Farkhunda, sent shock waves across Afghanistan. In a rare sight, Farkhunda’s coffin was carried to the grave site in north Kabul’s Khair Khana neighborhood by a dozen women, including some women’s rights activists, with men escorting them.

The public outpouring of grief in many ways seemed a reversal of the events that led to her death.

After police were criticized for not doing enough to control the mob of several hundred men who surrounded Farkhunda at the Shah-Do Shamshira shrine in Kabul last week, police officers accompanied the procession from the family’s home to the cemetery. Young men and women took smartphone pictures of the ceremony and broadcast them on social media.

Many in Afghanistan and overseas were aghast to learn that hundreds more people gathered along the banks of the Kabul River to take pictures and videos of Farkhunda’s burning body, which was left in a dirt patch of the shallow river.

When Farkhunda’s body was taken from her family’s house to the funeral, young men cried out, “Allahu Akbar!” — God is great — the same words her attackers used before beating her and running her body over with a car before setting it on fire.

Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said 13 police officials had been suspended. Thirteen suspects in the crime have been arrested, officials said.