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Eyewitnesses announced that the Taliban hanged the bodies of the alleged kidnappers in four squares around the Afghan city of Herat.
Wazir Ahmad Siddiqui, who runs a pharmacy next to Herat’s main square, said four bodies were taken to the square and hanged from a crane.
Siddiqui said that three bodies had been taken to other squares across the city in western Afghanistan for display, in a shocking move that indicated that Back to some of the previous methods of the Taliban.
Terrifying images circulated on social media show the body of an accused kidnapper hanging from a crane above the plaza, with a banner affixed to it, while crowds of people watch from below and from nearby buildings.
My friend said that the Taliban claimed that the four She was caught participating in the kidnapping of a businessman and killed by the police.
It was not immediately clear whether the accused kidnappers were killed in a fight with the police or after their arrest.
There was no immediate comment from the Taliban regarding the incident in Herat, Afghanistan’s third largest city.
Shocking photos show the body of an accused kidnapper hanging from a crane above the main square in the Afghan city of Herat.
Wazir Ahmad Seddiqi, who runs a pharmacy next to Herat’s main square, said four bodies were taken to the square in Herat (above) and hanged from a crane.
Mullah Nur al-Din al-Turabi, one of the founders of the Taliban and the main enforcer of their strict interpretation of Islamic law when they ruled Afghanistan, has said the regime will repeat executions and amputations of thieves – although they may not be public.
Mullah Nur al-Din al-Turabi denied anger over past Taliban executions, which sometimes took place in front of crowds in a stadium, and warned the world not to intervene.
“Everyone criticized us for the penalties in the stadium, but we didn’t say anything about their laws and penalties,” he told the Associated Press in Kabul.
Nobody will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and make our own laws of the Qur’an.
Since the Taliban took control of the country in August, Afghans have been watching to see if they would reimpose their harsh rule in the late 1990s.
In his early 60s, he was minister of justice and head of the so-called Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – the de facto body of the religious police – during the previous Taliban rule.
Al-Turabi’s comments suggest that the group’s leaders remain rooted in an ultra-conservative and hardline worldview, even as they embrace video and cell phones.
Convicted killers were usually executed with a single shot to the head, carried out by the victim’s family, who had the option of accepting “blood money” and letting the offender live.
There was no immediate comment from the Taliban about the hangings in Herat. Pictured: A Taliban fighter carries a rocket-propelled grenade in Herat on August 13
An eyewitness Wazir Ahmad Siddiqi said that four bodies were taken to Herat’s main square to be hanged. Pictured: Taliban fighters stand on a car in Herat on August 13
For convicted thieves, the punishment was amputation of the hand. For those convicted of highway robbery, a hand and a foot were amputated.
Trials and convictions were rarely public and the judiciary was favored in favor of the Muslim clergy. Al-Turabi said judges – including women – will hear cases this time, but the penalties themselves will be revived.
“Cutting off hands is very necessary for security,” he said.
Taliban fighters have revived a punishment they usually used in the past – public defamation of men accused of petty theft.
On at least two occasions in the past week, Kabul men were strapped into the back of a pickup truck, handcuffed, and offered to be humiliated.
In one case, their faces were painted to identify them as thieves. In the other case, stale bread was hung by their necks or stuffed into their mouths. It was not clear what their crimes were.
Mr. Al-Turabi was wearing a white turban and a thick white untrimmed beard, slightly limping on his prosthetic leg. He lost a leg and an eye fighting Soviet forces in the 1980s.
Under the new Taliban government, he is responsible for prisons. He is among a number of Taliban leaders, including members of the all-male interim government, who are on the UN sanctions list.
During the previous Taliban rule, he was one of the organization’s most ferocious and staunch enforcers.
When the Taliban seized power in 1996, one of his first acts was to shout at a female journalist. In an interview this week with the Associated Press, al-Turabi spoke to a female journalist.
“We have changed from the past,” he said.
He said the Taliban would allow television, mobile phones, photos and video ‘because this is a necessity for the people and we are serious about that’.
Al-Turabi dismissed criticism of the former Taliban rule, arguing that it had succeeded in achieving stability.
Even as Kabul residents express their fear of the new Taliban rulers, some grudgingly concede that the capital is already much safer.
Before the Taliban took power, gangs of thieves roamed the streets, and crime drove most people off the streets after dark.
Taliban founder Mullah Nur al-Din al-Turabi (pictured) has warned that the regime will repeat executions and amputations of thieves – although they may not be public.
“It is not good to see these people being shamed in public, but that stops criminals because when people see them, they think ‘I don’t want to be me,'” said Aman, a shopkeeper in central Kabul.
Another shop owner said it was a human rights violation, but he’s also glad he can open his shop after dark.
The Taliban have had difficulties presenting a reformed image since taking power on August 15 and pledging a more moderate type of rule.
But videos and footage from inside Afghanistan showed militants beating and beating people in the streets, with reports of targeted killings and fighters going door-to-door in search of blue US passports.
Earlier this month, Taliban fighters cut off the head of an Afghan soldier before singing as they held the victim’s severed head high from his hair.
The man on the ground is believed to have been an Afghan soldier due to the color of his dark green uniform – similar to that given by the United States to the national army.
The spoiled footage surfaced when a Taliban spokesman claimed they were not violent, insisted that women would enjoy “basic rights” and claimed the new government “is building a welfare state”.
“We are the people of Afghanistan,” Shaheen said. Many of us were practicing jihad and resistance against the Soviet Union then, and now after 20 years of occupation by the United States and its allies.
“Now, we are focused on improving the lives of our people, building Afghanistan, creating jobs for our people, and building a welfare state,” he continued.
If you compare it with the past, then we had an internal war, a fight. But now we focus more on our economic activities, on job creation, on expanding education, and on other people’s needs.
The footage of the beheading emerged just days after Taliban militants executed the brother of an Afghan resistance leader.
The man is the brother of Amrullah Saleh, the former Afghan vice president who became one of the leaders of the anti-Taliban opposition forces in the Panjshir Valley.
The news of the killing of Saleh’s brother Ruhollah Azizi came days after Taliban forces took control of the center of Panjshir province, the last province steadfast against them after taking control of the rest of Afghanistan last month.
“They executed my uncle,” Ebadullah Saleh told Reuters in a text message. They killed him yesterday and did not allow us to bury him. They kept saying that his body must rot.
A defenseless man was shot dead AfghanistanPanjshir Valley earlier this month – a civilian was allegedly executed by Taliban Fighters in a revenge killing. It was not clear why the man was targeted.
Turabi denied anger over past Taliban executions, which sometimes took place in front of crowds in a stadium, and warned the world not to intervene.
Taliban fighters pose for a photo while they patrol inside Ghazni city, southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan on August 12.
Footage showed men who appeared to be Taliban fighters walking to another man on the side of a road before several gunshots rang out and he fell to the ground.
At least 20 people are believed to have been killed in a similar fashion in the valley since it was captured by the Taliban earlier this month.
The Panjshir Valley was the only region in Afghanistan that was not occupied by the Taliban when they invaded the rest of the country in a blunt swift attack earlier this year.
The Islamists had never occupied the valley before – having successfully held out against them in the 1990s and against the Soviets before that.
But the Taliban announced last week that they had captured it and claimed that the leaders of the resistance, including the famous commander Ahmed Masoud, fled to Turkey, but some pockets of anti-Taliban resistance still exist inside Afghanistan.
Islamic militia seized Kabul and brought a chaotic and deadly end to the 20-year war last month, with the Taliban now returning to control the country as it had from 1996 to 2001.
British and American forces officially withdrew from the country on August 31, describing the terrorist group’s recapture of control as “The biggest jihadist victory since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989′.
The group’s leaders remain rooted in an ultra-conservative and hard-line worldview, even as they embrace technological changes, such as video and cell phones.
The unelected leadership council is how the Taliban ran their first government, which brutally applied an extreme form of Islamic law from 1996 until its overthrow by US-led forces in 2001.
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