A man found guilty of killing five people was executed in public in front of 2,000 people on Tuesday, in accordance with Sharia law.
This is the second time the Taliban authorities have carried out a public execution since taking power in Afghanistan in August 2021. On Tuesday June 20, a man convicted of murder was executed by shooting in the grounds of a mosque in Sultan Ghazi Baba, in central Laghman province, “so that he suffers and [his death] serves as a lesson to others”, provincial officials wrote in a statement.
The statement named the man executed on Tuesday as “Ajmal, son of Naseem” and said he had been convicted of murdering five people.
An official from the provincial Department of Communication and Culture said that around 2,000 people had attended the execution – including relatives of his victims – and that it had been carried out in accordance with sharia, Islamic law. “I saw the criminal being executed for qisas, after the victims’ family had not forgiven him,” said a witness to the execution, who requested anonymity. “He was shot six times, if I counted correctly. I couldn’t see if he was dead or not, but he was then taken away by ambulance,” he added.
Decision by the Supreme Chief
The sentence was carried out by an executioner who shot the condemned man with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, and not by a relative of the victims as permitted by the “qisas”, according to a provincial official.
In Ajmal’s case, all possibilities of appeal had been exhausted and the final decision to carry out the sentence was taken by the Supreme Chief himself, the Supreme Court said in a statement. Hibatullah Akhundzada had “extraordinarily documented” the case, which “was discussed with scholars at a large gathering”, the court explained. “In the end, the order of “qisas” for the murderer was approved and order was given to implement it,” it added.