U.S. lawyer crusades for Afghan justice
There was not a shred of credible evidence to support the charge of terrorism, or any other crime, for that matter. Still, the Afghan woman was tried, convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison.
As she pleaded her case before the male judge and lawyers, the room erupted in raucous laughter.
Watching this, American Kim Motley sat stunned and speechless.
“The police had stopped a shared taxi van and found a cache of cellphones,” says the 37-year-old mother of three.
“She was the only one without money for bribes, so they arrested her. When she cried in court, the men treated it like a joke.”
When Motley arrived in 2008 for a one-year stint as a foreign lawyer in Afghanistan, she knew it was going to be nothing like practising law in her home city of Milwaukee.
“One of the main motivating factors was the money,” she candidly admits of her decision to travel to Afghanistan four years ago to accept a job with the U.S. State Department training and mentoring Afghan lawyers.
“I had no affinity for Afghanistan. And it certainly wasn’t my intention to change the justice system there.”
Whatever her initial ideas, the experience of watching an innocent woman thrown in jail for nearly a decade, along with a host of other appalling cases of injus- tice, changed Motley’s plans.
She began not only taking on some of those cases pro bono, but also winning.
Her success in one of the most corrupt justice systems in the world has won her international accolades along with profiles in the New York Times and on the BBC World Service.
Next Tuesday, Motley will be in town thanks to the efforts of Calgarians Emma May and Sippy Chhina, co-chairs of a fundraiser at the Calgary Petroleum Club.
The money raised at the $150-per-person cocktail event will go to the creation of a foundation for pro bono cases within Motley Legal, the law firm she runs with the help of her husband, Claude.
What it’s also brought her, not surprisingly, is the wrath of powerful segments of Afghan society. In addition facing an increasing amount of red tape, there has also been the occasional death threat.
“I keep my movements to myself and I get regular security updates,” she says matter-of-factly. “I do a lot of street-smart things, too.”
Her casual response to being a controversial figure in one of the world’s most dangerous places, she says, can be directly traced to her childhood in Milwaukee, where she grew up in an impoverished, gang-ridden neighbourhood.
The daughter of an AfricanAmerican father and a South Korean immigrant mother, she also learned early what it was like to stand out in the crowd.
“Apart from being one of the few two-parent households I knew, my parents were also strict and emphasized education,” she says. “They also scrimped to get us into private schools, so we were different in that way, too.”
Those early experiences gave Motley a backbone, the strength of which she only fully learned while in Afghanistan.
“I know some people would go running and screaming from what I saw,” she says. “It just got to me and made me want to help.”
Her many successes include a former British army officer being tried on trumped-up charges of corruption and fraud, as well as an Afghan man imprisoned without charge because he is of the Sikh faith.
The case she is best known for, however, is that of Gulnaz, a young woman who had been sentenced to 12 years for adultery after being raped by her cousin’s husband.
Motley first met the 20-year-old in prison, where she and the baby conceived in the rape had been living for two years. Gulnaz, says Motley, was arrested after going to the police to report the rape.
Motley eventually secured a pardon for her client, thanks also partly to Afghan President Hamid Karzai relenting to international pressure.
“You can have successes in Afghanistan,” says Motley, a former Mrs. Wisconsin beauty queen who divides her time between Kabul and Milwaukee. “I know I can’t change the system, but cases like this are important in that they can set precedents.”
While Motley has no plans to abandon her work in Afghanistan, she will admit to being fearful of what the future will hold when the majority of U.S. combat troops pull out in 2014.
“I don’t know how it will affect my security,” she says.
Her greater worry, though, is the effect it will have on the people she sees on a daily basis.
“The troops leaving is going to empower the Taliban; they’ll see it as a victory,” she says. “One of the ways they’ll use it is to revert to the way they were with women and, even worse, to make up for lost time.”
She remains, however, just as determined.
“I need more troops with me,” says Motley, who says clients such as the Afghan women’s boxing team, who practise at the same Olympic stadium where the Taliban once held public executions, keep her inspired.
“I think they’re really cool — we believe in their right to fight,” says the woman who has inspired people around the world in her fight for human rights and justice in Afghanistan.