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 KABUL, Afghanistan — Zakia and Mohammad Ali, an Afghan couple who married for love despite death threats from her family and criminal charges by the authorities, were reunited on Tuesday after they were both freed from custody. The couple, Zakia, 18, and Mohammad Ali, 21, fled their homes in mountainous Bamian Province after her family threatened her with an “honor killing” because she wanted to marry outside her ethnic group, and against her father’s wishes. Several of her male family members publicly vowed to carry out an honor killing against her, angry not only that she had defied her family, but also that she had married someone from the Hazara ethnic group. Continue reading the main story Video 
 
 They remained in hiding, first in the mountains of central Afghanistan, and later in Kabul, until Mohammad Ali was spotted by his in-laws on June 6 and dragged to a police station. “Now, when my wife is released, I will be 1,000 percent happy.” 
 
 Zakia said: “After I get released, I hope we can have a happy life again and go and live in a place that is safe for us. (Like most of his and Zakia’s family, he goes by one name.) Ms. Naderi said: “The attorney general went out of his way to make sure that they don’t get punished for a crime that they didn’t commit. “I know my father and mother will not even want to see me,” she said.
– An Afghan couple who married for love—and wound up getting arrested for it—reunited yesterday, after both were freed from custody, the New York Times reports. Mohammad Ali, 21, a Shiite Hazara, and Zakia, 18, a Sunni Tajik, eloped in March and went on the run from their families and the law, prompting the Times to dub them "the Afghan Romeo and Juliet." Zakia's father pressed charges against them for bigamy, saying Zakia had already been married to her nephew—she says she was merely engaged to him against her will. Six of Mohammad Ali's male relatives apprehended him on June 6 and took him to police, who charged him with kidnapping. Zakia then turned herself in to a women's shelter, where the Times explains she was "effectively kept under a form of house arrest." But the case attracted widespread media attention, particularly in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan's attorney general intervened, ordering Mohammad Ali's release last week; the charges against Zakia were dismissed yesterday. He also offered to file charges against Zakia's father for trying to force her to marry against her will—a crime under Afghanistan's Elimination of Violence Against Women law—but she declined. "If my family catches us, they won't leave us alive," she says, and she never expects to see her parents again. "But I don't want trouble for them."