Taliban founder says executions and amputations will return in Afghanistan

One of the founders of the Taliban and former justice minister and head of the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention  Mullah Nooruddin Turabi said that the Islamic group will carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public. This comes as Taliban fighters have revived a punishment they commonly used in the past — public shaming of men accused of small-time theft.

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“Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments. No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran,” Turabi told The Associated Press. 

The Taliban had taken over the presidential palace in Kabul on August 15. While leaders across the world were concerned whether they will recreate their harsh rule of the late 1990s, the group’s leaders vowed to respect women. 

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During the Taliban’s first stint at Kabul, executions of convicted murderers were usually by a single shot to the head, carried out by the victim’s family, who had the option of accepting “blood money” and allowing the culprit to live. For convicted thieves, the punishment was amputation of a hand. For those convicted of highway robbery, a hand and a foot were amputated.

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Trials and convictions were rarely public and the judiciary was weighted in favor of Islamic clerics, whose knowledge of the law was limited to religious injunctions.

“Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security,” he said, saying it had a deterrent effect. He said the Cabinet was studying whether to do punishments in public and will “develop a policy.”

Recent reports suggest that on at least two occasions in the last week, Kabul men have been packed into the back of a pickup truck, their hands tied, and were paraded around to humiliate them. 

With inputs from the Associated Press