Six-Year-Old Afghan Girl Sold by Her Father to a 55-year-old Pedophile Muslim Cleric for a Goat and Sack of Rice

A father from Afghanistan, barely making ends meet, sold his own daughter to a 55-year-old cleric for a goat and some food. Footage doing the rounds on the Internet shows the moment local women gave him a beating.


The father agreed to sell his six-year-old daughter Gharibgol to the 55-year-old imam, Seyed Abdolkarim, which runs counter the law in Afghanistan, which allows girls to marry from the age of 16 and boys from 18, according to France 24.



Abdolkarim was arrested when it had came to police knowledge that he had wed a girl who was sold to him for a goat, a bag of rice, tea, sugar, and cooking oil. The officers were pursuing the father after local women discovered what had happened and snapped at him.



The footage was taken by local journalist Fawad Ahmady for France 24.



The man explained he tried to take care of his family and at the same time wanted to get rid of another mouth he had to feed. Abdolkarim promised him that he wouldn’t have sexual intercourse with the girl until she turned 18 and that sealed the deal.



After the ceremony, the imam reportedly took his six-year-old wife to his relative’s house in Firozkoh, in Ghor province, without specifying their status. Thus the house owner at first thought that it was his daughter. However, some time later he noticed that Abdolkarim was undressing the girl before they slept.



A local women rights bureau for Ghor province was later notified.



Tests carried out at a local hospital at a hospital proved that the imam didn’t touch the girl, who is now in a safe place with her mother.



The bureau is planning to arrange a divorce and strip the father of his parental rights.



In 2010 a survey conducted by the Afghanistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (AMICS) showed that 46.4 percent of marriages in Afghanistan involve women under eighteen while 15.2 percent of surveyed women were married before the age of 15.