KABUL (AP) – Afghanistan’s Taliban government has reportedly carried out its second public execution in alarming times since taking office in 2021. The country’s Supreme Court has announced that a Kabul man named Ajmal was found guilty of killing five people in separate cases last year.
The execution took place in the eastern part of Laghman Territory, near a mosque near the Governor’s Palace, in front of the Supreme Court according to Islamic law standards. A child of one of Ajmal’s victims, Siad Wali, carried out the execution with an ambush gun. Four other relatives killed by Ajmal were also present to witness the horrific event. This public execution is likely to be condemned by the world community. A month earlier, the United Nations had accused the Taliban of carrying out public executions, floggings and stonings since coming to power and called on their rulers to stop such practices.
A subsequent report by the Afghan Member States Assistance Mission found that in the past six months alone, 274 men, 58 women and two boys had been flagellated freely in the country.
The Taliban Supreme Court in Kabul defended the execution, arguing that the case against Ajmal had been fully investigated and considered. After three different courts upheld the verdict, Taliban leader Hibatullah Akunzada stepped through a separate review of the murders to approve the final consent to the execution. It is worth noting that Akunzada was awaiting Taliban authority in 2016 after his predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, was assassinated in a US airstrike in Pakistan. Despite restricting the rights of groups and the international community, this is the second known public execution attempt since the Taliban came to power.
The first occurred last December when an Afghan man convicted of murder was executed by the victim’s father in front of hundreds of spectators and senior Taliban officials in Farah district.
In the Taliban’s past in the late 1990s, public executions, floggings and stonings of those accused in Taliban courts were commonplace. Despite initial assurances that the rights of women and minorities would be taken into account, the Taliban’s subsequent activities showed limitations and flexibility in rights, introducing a boycott of girls’ education after the Sixth Review.
