A remarkable documentary film about a Yemeni woman who's on death row for having killed her husband when she was 15 has been garnering awards at film festivals around the world. The film, Amina, was produced by Yemen's first female producer, Khadija al-Salami.
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Ms al-Salami decided to tell Amina's story after reading about her case in a local newspaper. Like Amina, Ms al-Salami had been forced to marry at the age of 11, something that is not uncommon in Yemen. "Amina reminded me of myself," she says, "and I realized that I could easily have been in her place".
Filming inside prison
Before making the documentary, Khadija believed that Amina had killed her
husband. But she soon discovered that Amina could not have murdered him.
"Her husband was strangled," says Ms al-Salami, "and his body
was thrown into a cistern. A woman could not do that." Amina had accused
two of her husband's cousins of committing the crime. When she did, they
accused her of being an accomplice. The authorities arrested Amina and the
elder cousin, but the younger one was set free.
Against all odds, Ms al-Salami was able to get permission to film Amina inside the women's ward of the central prison in the capital, Sana'a. Khadija was only supposed to stay for an hour or two,
"but they sort of forgot about me. The women were happy that I was interested in their stories because nobody wants to hear about them. They're considered bad women and people think they should be shunned."
Ms al-Salami filmed all the women, but she focused primarily on Amina. Amina had been sentenced to death nine years earlier. She was originally scheduled to be executed in 2002, when she reached legal age to hang under Yemeni law. But then she was raped by a prison guard and became pregnant. Her execution was delayed until 2005. At the time Khadija filmed her, Amina was certain that she was about to be executed. Ms al-Salami says:
"She tried to show indifference, but she was feeling bad and hurt. She had the feeling she was going to be killed and nothing mattered to her. Maybe that's one of the reasons that she let me film her unveiled and that she smoked on camera. At the same time, though, she was hoping we might help her".
Release
Ms al-Salami and Yemen's human rights minister helped bring Amina's case to the
attention of the country's president. Ms al-Salami comments:
"He didn't know that she was a minor at the time of the crime. There was a second mitigating factor: one of Amina's daughters was killed in a car accident, and under Islamic law, this lifted the death sentence."
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As a result, the president signed a decree releasing Amina from prison. Ms al-Salami found a house for Amina and her child to live, and she helped send her to school. But soon another problem arose: a few months ago, the cousin who killed her husband was executed for the crime. Now his family is threatening to take revenge and kill Amina.
Future
Ms al-Salami cannot protect Amina 24 hours a day. But with the help of a friend
who is a Spanish journalist, she's hoping to get Amina and her son to Spain.
She would like to help Amina get an education and eventually find a job so she
can be independent and take care of herself and her son.
There are dozens of other women still in jail at the Sana'a central prison. Ms al-Salami knows that she can't make a film about each one of them, but she says, Amina's case has helped reveal the flaws in the Yemeni justice system, particularly when it comes to women. Slowly, she adds, reforms are being introduced.