UN Human Rights Office spokesman Jeremy Laurence on Wednesday condemned the execution in Afghanistan of a man convicted of murder in what is the first capital punishment carried out in public since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.
«Public executions constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Such executions are arbitrary in nature and contrary to the right to life protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Afghanistan is a state party,» it specified in a statement in which it described this as «deeply disturbing.»
Laurence explained that the death penalty «is incompatible with the fundamental principles of human rights» and therefore «its use cannot be reconciled with the full right to life. He urged the authorities to «establish an immediate moratorium on any further executions.
The group’s spokesman and Afghan Deputy Minister of Information and Culture, Zabihullah Mujahid, said Wednesday in a statement published on his Twitter account that the executioner, identified as Tajmir, was convicted of the murder of another man in the town of Gang, in the province of Farah.
Mujahid said that the Afghan Deputy Prime Minister and co-founder of the Taliban, Mullah Abdulghani Baradar, and the Minister of the Interior and leader of the Haqqani Network, Sirajudin Haqqani, were present at the execution along with other senior officials of the Islamic Emirate 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 in Afghanistan, as reported by the official Bajtar News agency.
