An Afghan who murdered a man and his heavily pregnant wife has been executed by a relative of the victims, under the Taliban’s retaliatory punishment system.
The man was executed in front of crowds at a sports stadium in Qala-i-Naw, the capital of Badghis province, the Supreme Court said in a statement.
It was the eleventh public execution since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, according to an AFP tally.
The man was shot three times by a relative of the victims in front of thousands of onlookers, witnesses told news agencies.
The man had been ‘sentenced to retaliatory punishment’ for shooting a couple.
‘The murderer killed two people, a man and his wife, who was around eight months pregnant,’ Matiullah Muttaqi, the information chief for Badghis province, said.
The execution followed a review by three courts and final approval from Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, he said.
‘The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused,’ the Supreme court statement said.
‘Many people came to watch the execution, including the victims’ family, who exercised their right according to Islamic law,’ said Juma Khan, 36, who witnessed the event.
Official notices inviting Afghans to attend the execution were widely circulated on Wednesday.
Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out in sports stadiums.
The previous execution took place in April, when four men were publicly put to death in three different provinces on the same day in front of thousands of spectators, including Taliban officials.
Taliban authorities continue to employ corporal punishment – mainly flogging – for offences including theft, adultery and alcohol consumption.
However, all execution orders are signed by the Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader Akhundzada, who lives in the movement’s heartland of Kandahar.
Law and order is central to the Taliban’s hardline ideology, which emerged from the chaos of a civil war following the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989.
The United Nations and rights groups such as Amnesty International have condemned the Taliban government’s use of corporal punishment and the death penalty.
The UN’s Human Rights office said following the execution: ‘We condemn the public execution of a man at Badghis Stadium after he was sentenced to death for murder.
‘Public executions breach international law, and the death penalty more generally is incompatible with the fundamental right to life.
‘Volker Turk urges the de facto authorities to take concrete steps to promptly abolish capital punishment – starting by imposing an immediate moratorium on executions.’
Meanwhile, Amnesty said Afghanistan was among countries where death sentences were imposed after trials that ‘did not meet international fair trial standards’, according to its annual report published in April.
