Hundreds of Afghan women are languishing in prison for so-called moral crimes, which include running away from home and having sex outside marriage, campaign group Human Rights Watch said Wednesday, March 28, according to AFP.

The report released in Kabul, "I Had to Run Away", called for them to be freed and said President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government had failed to fulfill its obligations under international human rights laws.

"It is shocking that 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban, women and girls are still imprisoned for running away from domestic violence or forced marriage," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

The group estimated there are a total of 400 women in prison and girls in juvenile detention facilities having been accused or convicted of offences including "running away", which is not a crime under the Afghan penal code. "Some women and girls have been convicted of sex outside of marriage after being raped or forced into prostitution," it added.

"Judges often convict solely on the basis of 'confessions' given in the absence of lawyers and 'signed' without having been read to women who cannot read or write. After conviction, women routinely face long prison sentences, in some cases more than 10 years."

HRW quoted one 17-year-old inmate named as Khalida P, imprisoned for running away with a boy her parents had forbidden her to marry, as saying: "My parents come every week on visiting day. Every time they tell me that very soon they will pay the prison staff to give me to them, and then they will kill me."

The report also cited a woman sentenced to three years in prison after fleeing a father-in-law who raped her and had her brother murdered as saying: "I am happy in here. Here I am not afraid because I know no-one is coming in the night to kill me."