An Afghan woman whose 1985 portrait on the cover of National Geographic magazine became a global sensation was Wednesday deported from Pakistan along with her four children, officials said.
Sharbat Gula, now in her 40s, was handed over to Afghan authorities at the Torkham border crossing before dawn, local border official Manzoor Shah said.
Gula was arrested in the north-western city of Peshawar last month for forging documents in an attempt to obtain Pakistani citizenship, police official Tahir Khan said.
A special court last Friday paved the way for her release by handing her a token 15 days imprisonment and a fine, said Imtiaz Ahmed, an official at the Pakistani agency which deals with forgery cases.
Sharbat Gula, whose iconic image taken by photographer Steve McCurry earned her the title of the "Mona Lisa of the Afghan war," had been living in Pakistan since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union.
The Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Omar Zakhirwal, said Afghan President Ashraf Ghani would meet the "beloved Afghan icon" at a welcome ceremony at his palace.
McCurry photographed her in December 1984, when she was 12 years old and a refugee in a camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
The photograph appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine in June 1985, and was widely used to publicize the plight of refugees.
Last year, the Pakistani government began a crackdown on Afghan refugees who allegedly used forged documents to obtain Pakistani nationality.
