Pakistan's Nat Geo 'Afghan girl' free on bail

An Afghan woman immortalized on a National Geographic magazine cover is to be freed on bail days after being arrested in Pakistan for fraud, a government minister said Sunday.

The haunting image of Sharbat Gula, taken in a Pakistan refugee camp by photographer Steve McCurry in the 1980s, became the most famous cover image in the magazine's history.

A Pakistani prosecutor says National Geographic's famed green-eyed 'Afghan Girl' has made her first appearance before a court, insisting she did not fraudulently obtain Pakistani nationality. Manzoor Aalam said Sharbat Gulla, during Friday's court hearing, essentially retracted the confession that investigators say she made after her arrest. She was detained on Wednesday in the northwestern city of Peshawar on charges of holding a fake Pakistani identity card.

"I think I will have to review this case because she is a woman and we should see it from a humanitarian angle," Pakistan Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told a press conference Sunday.

"But if we withdraw charges against her, deport her or give her a temporary visa to leave Pakistan, then we will have to take back cases against the officials who issued her fake ID card, they are real culprits and I do not want to let them off the hook in any manner," he said.

"As a first step the FIA should arrange her bail as soon as possible so that she should get of jail," Khan added.

Officials say the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) has so far re-verified 91 million ID cards and detected 60,675 fraudulent cards.

Her arrest highlights the desperate measures many Afghans are willing to take to avoid returning to their war-torn homeland as Pakistan cracks down on undocumented foreigners.

Pakistan has for decades provided safe haven for millions of Afghans who fled their country after the Soviet invasion of 1979.

The country hosts 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees, according to UNHCR, making it the third-largest refugee hosting nation in the world. The agency also estimates a further one million unregistered refugees are in the country.