{"id":4263,"date":"2021-10-25T22:24:59","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T17:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rukhshana.com\/?p=4263"},"modified":"2021-10-25T22:42:38","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T18:12:38","slug":"a-female-volleyball-player-died-a-week-before-the-taliban-came-to-power-her-parents-are-searching-for-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rukhshana.com\/en\/a-female-volleyball-player-died-a-week-before-the-taliban-came-to-power-her-parents-are-searching-for-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"A female volleyball player died a week before the Taliban came to power. Her parents are searching for answers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Zahra Nader <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late July, Mahjabin Hakimi received some good news: her special immigrant visa for the United States was finally being processed. The 25-year-old, who was an officer in Afghanistan\u2019s special forces and a professional volleyball player, was excited to begin a new life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Mahjabin never made it to America. Several weeks later, she was dead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The circumstances of her death have become the focus of intense media scrutiny and whirling rumours in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Her parents\u2019 quest to find out what happened to their daughter in her final hours is mired in the fog of the Afghan state\u2019s collapse, underscoring the ever-worsening situation for women and girls in Afghanistan. Now they fear they will never find justice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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According to local news reports citing the coach of the Kabul city volleyball team, the Taliban beheaded the young woman — even though Mahjabin died on August 6, nine days before the Taliban took over Kabul. A prominent Afghan woman police officer<\/a> shared photos on Twitter allegedly showing Mahjabin\u2019s slit neck, leading to a flurry of reports in international media including NBC News, The New York Post and The Times of India. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A relative of Mahjabin\u2019s fianc\u00e9 said she hung herself. But the Hakimis suspect they are lying: her fianc\u00e9, Majeed was immediately arrested by police when her body was discovered, but later released.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the morning of Friday, August 6, Mahjabin\u2019s friend Taiba Sahar went to visit her in her home in Kabul, where she lived with her future in-laws. Sahar took along a friend, and the two women were led to Mahjabin\u2019s bedroom by her fianc\u00e9\u2019s sister. Sahar had visited Mahjabin at least three times in the past few months, and the bedroom now appeared unusually tidy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the two young women were waiting, they heard the fiance\u2019s mother scream. They followed the scream to the bathroom, where they saw Mahjabin\u2019s body. \u201cWith a green scarf tightly knotted around her neck, Mahjabin was hanging from the window ledge,\u201d Sahar recalled in a phone interview. \u201cThere were wounds around her neck and under her chin that were not consistent with injuries from [hanging by a scarf]\u201d, Sahar said from the Fort McCoy military camp in Wisconsin, where she awaits processing after being evacuated from Kabul in late August. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the 23-year-old Sahar who worked as a policewoman at the Kabul headquarters, things didn\u2019t add up. If she had hung herself, the body would not have looked so undisturbed. \u201cThere was no sign of struggle as if she seemed not to have moved her hands or feet,\u201d she said. Sahar was particularly unsettled by the request from a relative of Majeed who asked her to lie to the police about what she saw.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cHe told me to say that we saw her walk into the bathroom alive before we found her dead,\u201d Sahar recalled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The police arrested her fianc\u00e9, but later they released him on bail, according to the relative, who asked that his relationship to the family not be described out of fear of retribution. A former police officer who worked at the district where Mahjabin lived, told Rukhshana Media on condition of anonymity that the result of their investigation was destroyed in transition as the Taliban returned to power in mid-August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Hakimis, who lost another daughter to suicide, Mahjabin\u2019s death — and the lack of clarity surrounding it — is tormenting. \u201cI want to know what happened to my daughter. Even if it was suicide, I want to know the reason,\u201d said Sarwar Hakimi, her father. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they were told by one of Majeed\u2019s relatives that Mahjabin was in the hospital, the couple rushed to Kabul from their native Ghazni province, some 300 kilometers to the southwest of the capital. In Kabul, they discovered that she was dead and that her body had been sent to a forensics center. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 51-year-old martial arts teacher taught his daughter karate from a young age, and the two were close. Photos and videos shared by her father with Rukhshana Media show a young woman visibly full of life. In one, her father is holding Mahjabin in his arms. Both are smiling to the camera, their hair is windswept. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey said my daughter hanged herself from a window 4-feet high. But she was 5 foot 3, so how does that work?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sahar also threw doubt on the suggestion of suicide, describing Mahjabin as a happy and positive person. Ever since the pair met six years ago in Turkey on a training course for the security forces, Mahjabin regretted the suffering her sister\u2019s suicide caused her parents. Sahar said it was \u201cunthinkable\u201d that Mahjabin would do the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Relatives of both Mahjabin and Majeed said the couple had difficulties, centered around his opposition to her work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI talked to her on Thursday, a day before [she died]. She told me that her visa for the U.S. was in progress, but her fianc\u00e9 refused to go with her,\u201d said Mahjabin\u2019s mother, 50-year-old Aqela, who only goes by her first name. A year earlier, Majeed forced Mahjabin to give up her job in the special forces, said family members and friends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n