Taliban’s supreme court in a statement said that 11 people, including two women, were publicly flogged at a sports ground in the city of Faizabad in the northern province of Badakhshan province on Friday afternoon.
The statement said the 11 were accused of “moral crimes, adultery and procuring.”
Sources from the province said that all 11 people were lashed by the Taliban 39 times.
This comes as the Taliban has so far flogged in public at least 250 people in different provinces on charges of various crimes.
The trend of public flogging by the Taliban’s morality police started last year in November when the leader of the group, Hibatullah Akhundzada, asked judges to implement Sharia law in their decisions in courts, including death penalty.
Last December, the Taliban publicly executed a man charged with murder in the western province of Farah where key figures of the group, including their deputy leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, had attended the event.
In response to the Taliban’s public punishment, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the international community was “calling for the suspension of the death penalty [by the Taliban].”
US State Department spokesman Ned Price has said the implementation of the death penalty by the Taliban indicates the group’s return to its “dark past.”
In response to international criticism on the matter, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the international community “should not interfere in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.”
