Out-of-power Taliban Resume Public Executions

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 15, 2006 — -- Almost five years after being thrown out of power as a result of the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan, the Taliban has gained sufficient strength in some remote parts of the country to resume public executions of people convicted of murder by pro-Taliban Islamic courts.

In the first week of May, the Taliban claimed that Badshah Khan, a convict, was executed in the presence of a large number of people in central Urozgan Province.

Badshah Khan was tried by a Taliban-appointed Shariah (Islamic) court and found guilty of murdering one Fateh Khan, according to Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi. Speaking on satellite phone from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan, Ahmadi said the court included Ulema (religious scholars), who sentenced Badshah Khan to death after trying him under Islamic law. He acknowledged that Badshah Khan was publicly executed in the district headquarters town of Gizab in Urozgan, which is the native province of Taliban Islamic movement founder Mulla Mohammad Omar. He said the heirs of Fateh Khan refused to forgive Badshah Khan or accept blood money, despite repeated requests from the family of the convicted murderer and the religious scholars present on the occasion.

"The members of the court then gave the go-ahead signal to the heirs of Fateh Khan to exercise their Islamic right of Qissas [revenge] and execute Badshah Khan," Ahmadi said. "One man shot at and killed Badshah Khan from close range."

This marks the first time after losing power in December 2001 that the Taliban has organized a public execution of a convicted killer. Ahmadi said it showed the level of Taliban control in the Urozgan and added that the Taliban had the power to arrest and try criminals and publicly implement decisions of its Islamic courts.

President Hamid Karzai's Afghan government and the U.S. and NATO military authorities refrained from commenting on the Taliban's claims. They neither confirmed nor denied the execution.

Independent sources, however, confirmed that a man accused of murder had been executed in a remote part of the insurgency-hit Urozgan Province. They see the Taliban's power growing in Urozgan and in neighboring provinces such as Kandahar, Zabul, Ghazni, Helmand, Nimruz and Farah in central and southwestern Afghanistan. The area near the border with Pakistan is inhabited by Afghanistan's majority Pashtun ethnic group, which provided the bulk of the Taliban's fighters.