PAKTIA, Afghanistan — Taliban on Wednesday publicly executed a man in a stadium in Gardez, the capital of the eastern province of Paktia, marking the latest instance of public punishment since their return to power in August 2021.
The Taliban’s Supreme Court said in a statement that high-ranking Taliban officials, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s interior minister; Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani, minister for refugees; Abdullah Khalid, head of the Taliban’s appeals court; and his deputy, Wahidullah Siddiqui, were present at the execution, along with a large gathering of local residents who had come to witness the event.
According to the statement, the man, identified as Mohammad Ayaz from Mirzaki District in Paktia, was accused of premeditated murder, allegedly killing a man with a firearm. The court ruled in favor of qisas, or retributive justice, in this case.
The public execution in Gardez follows a series of similar incidents since the Taliban regained control. In December 2022, the Taliban conducted their first public execution, held in Farah Province in western Afghanistan, with at least ten senior Taliban leaders attending.
In September, Taliban prison official Habibullah Badr reported to Amu that among the 23,000 detainees in Taliban-controlled prisons, between 500 and 600 individuals had been sentenced to death, with around 400 awaiting qisas rulings.
In November 2022, Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada issued a decree authorizing the enforcement of certain Sharia punishments, including public lashings, executions, and amputations. Since then, the Taliban have implemented hundreds of public lashings across multiple provinces, with the first recorded instance taking place in Takhar Province, where 19 men and women were lashed in November 2022.
