'Necessary for security': veteran Taliban enforcer says amputations will resume [View all]

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Last edited Fri Sep 24, 2021, 10:58 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: The Guardian UK

Nooruddin Turabi, in charge of Afghan prisons, says executions and removal of hands will restart, but possibly not in public


Afghanistan's Taliban leader Mullah Nooruddin Turabi. 'No one will tell us what our laws should be.'

The Taliban will resume executions and the amputation of hands for criminals they convict, in a return to their harsh version of Islamic justice. According to a senior official – a veteran leader of the hardline Islamist group who was in charge of justice during its previous period in power – executions would not necessarily take place in public as they did before. The Taliban’s first period ruling Afghanistan during the 1990s, before they were toppled by a US-led invasion in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks, was marked by the grisly excesses of its perfunctory justice system, which included public executions in the football stadium in Kabul.

In an interview with Associated Press, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi – who was justice minister and head of the so-called ministry of propagation of virtue and prevention of vice during the Taliban’s previous rule – dismissed outrage over the Taliban’s executions in the past, which sometimes took place in front of crowds at a stadium, and warned the world against interfering with Afghanistan’s new rulers. Under the new Taliban government, Turabi is in charge of prisons. He is among a number of Taliban leaders, including members of the all-male interim cabinet, who are on a United Nations sanctions list.

“Everyone criticised us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments,” Turabi said in Kabul. “No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Qur’an.” “Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security,” Turabi added, saying it had a deterrent effect. He said the cabinet was studying whether to carry out punishments in public and would “develop a policy”.

Turabi’s comments follow warnings from Afghans who fled the country following the US withdrawal that the Taliban’s system of justice was more likely to follow the model of the way its “shadow courts” meted out punishments in areas it controlled, rather than the system that operated under the western-backed former government. The shadow court system, headed by Mawlavi Abdul Hakim Sharie, who is the Taliban’s new justice minister, was used to undermine the authority of the previous regime, resolving disputes in a country where many felt they had little access to legal remedy.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/24/afghanistan-taliban-enforcer-says-amputations-will-resume