In August 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and took control of the country. One of the first decisions they made was to release criminals serving prison sentences. In turn, and in retaliation, the latter made their country’s prosecutors one of their priority targets. To date, 83 Afghan prosecutors have been killed.

In November 2022, through the international association People Help, six cases of Afghan prosecutors in danger reached the UPF Legal Clinic. Subsequently, the University’s solidarity initiative was launched, in which teachers and students of the Faculty of Law collaborate with lawyers to provide fee-free defence of real cases of special academic and social interest.

"The problem is that there are cases, like the ones we are defending, that cannot wait as their lives are in constant danger. It is urgent that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should immediately post reinforcement personnel at the Spanish Embassy in Pakistan”

Several members of the Clinic have been working intensively for months to help the six of the affected persons with the aim of getting them to Spain, pursuant to article 38 of Law 12/2009, of 30 October, regulating the right to asylum and subsidiary protection. Through a straightforward procedure, this regulation allows authorizing the urgent transfer of the persons affected to Spain, from where they would be able to apply for asylum.

Maurici Pérez, director of the UPF Legal Clinic, regrets that “the Spanish Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, where some of the people we are helping are located irregularly, has hundreds of applications on the table and processing takes many months. The problem is that there are cases, like the ones we are defending, that cannot wait as their lives are in constant danger”. He adds that “it is urgent that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should immediately post reinforcement personnel at the Spanish Embassy in Pakistan”.

A prosecutor who had dealt with crimes of sexual assault

One of the six cases is particularly urgent. It is a female Afghan prosecutor, who at the time had successfully charged terrorists, murderers and sex offenders, and is currently hiding in Pakistan, alone with a child in her charge after her husband was killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan.

The problem, according to the UPF Legal Clinic, is that “Pakistan is not a safe place for her either as it has not ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention, and Afghan refugees who do not have a visa live there in the fear of being deported to Afghanistan at any time”.

The request for urgent transfer made by the UPF Legal Clinic to the Spanish Embassy in Pakistan, in the case of this prosecutor, dates back to 25 November 2022 and since then, six months on, they have not managed to expedite the process. For this reason that they have chosen to lodge an appeal with the High Court of Justice in Madrid, to try to speed up the process.

“The tragedy in Afghanistan gives us an opportunity to demonstrate that our commitment to human rights is not merely rhetorical, but that as a country and as a society we know how put words into action”

Maurici Pérez stresses that “the tragedy in Afghanistan gives us an opportunity to demonstrate that our commitment to human rights is not merely rhetorical, but that as a country and as a society we know how put words into action”. And he adds that “Western democracies are not credible in emerging countries if we leave the people who have risked their lives to defend the rule of law to their fate. Nothing suits the cause of tyranny more than incongruent democrats”.