The Taliban announced Wednesday the execution in Farah province of a man convicted of murder, in what is the first capital punishment carried out in public since the fundamentalists returned to power in August 2021 following the flight from Kabul of then-president Ashraf Ghani.
The group’s spokesman and Afghan Deputy Minister of Information and Culture, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a statement posted on his Twitter account that the executioner, identified as Tajmir, was convicted of murdering another man in the town of Gang in Farah province.
«The victim’s relatives identified this person and reported him to the authorities of the Islamic Emirate in Farah in view of his arrest,» he said, before adding that «the matter was examined by three courts in a very detailed and repeated manner and all the courts upheld a death penalty sentence against him.»
Mujahid said Afghan Deputy Prime Minister and Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdulghani Baradar and Interior Minister and Haqqani Network leader Sirajudin Haqqani were present at the execution along with other senior members of the Islamic Emirate. «After the event, prayers were held for the consolidation of national security in the country, more attention to the rights of the people and a better implementation of the ‘sharia’,» he concluded.
According to information gathered by the Afghan news agency Jaama Press, prior to the execution, calls were made to the population living in the area to come to the local sports center to witness the execution, the first since the restoration of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, as reported by the official agency Bajtar News.