'Afghan Girl' to be deported back to Afghanistan from Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Sharbat Gula, the subject of the "Afghan Girl" National Geographic cover, will be deported from Pakistan to Afghanistan, an Afghan official said.

"With utmost delight, I announce that Sharbat Gula is now free from the legal troubles she endured over the past couple of weeks," Omar Zakhilwal, Afghanistan's ambassador to Pakistan, said in a statement Facebook on Friday. "She soon will also be free from an uncertain life of a refugee as she will be on her way back to her own country as soon as next Monday where she still is a beloved image and a national icon."

Gula was arrested in Peshawar, Pakistan, in late October during an identity-card fraud investigation. In February of 2015, she'd been accused of using fake information to get a Pakistani Computerized National Identity Card. The case was referred to Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, which ultimately arrested Gula.

Gula pleaded guilty to living in Pakistan with fake identity documents and was sentenced to 15 days in prison. She will be released and deported from where she's lived for decades prior to the completion of the sentence, however. She will also pay a $1,100 fine.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani will meet with Gula once she arrives, Zakhilwal added.

In 1984, Steve McCurry photographed Gula. She was 12 years old at the time and living in a refugee camp near Peshawar after she and her relatives fled Afghanistan after a Soviet airstrike killed her parents during the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan War. In 2002, McCurry tracked down Gula in Pakistan and managed to take another photograph of her.