Taliban publicly executes murderer by shooting him five times in front of his victim’s family and thousands of spectators in football stadium

Taliban authorities on Monday publicly executed a convicted murderer by gunshot at a sports stadium, officials said, in the third death sentence carried out in Afghanistan in a matter of days.

The man, found guilty of a knife murder committed in January 2022, was executed in the northern city of Sheberghan thanks to a death sentence signed by the Taliban leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, according to a statement from the Supreme Court.

The statement identified the convict as Nazar Muhammad and said his case “was examined very thoroughly and repeatedly.”

He was shot five times in front of his victim’s family, including women and children, as well as thousands of spectators in the stadium, a local provincial official told AFP.

Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, a handful of executions have been carried out in line with their government’s austere vision of Islam.

Akhundzada ordered judges in 2022 to fully implement all aspects of Islamic law, including “eye for an eye” punishments known as “qisas.”

Under the Taliban government’s interpretation of Islamic law, the provisions allow for the death penalty as retaliation for the crime of murder.

Last week, two other men were executed with multiple shots in the back in the eastern city of Ghazni, carrying out death sentences also signed by Akhundzada.

According to an AFP count, five death sentences have been carried out since the return of the Taliban.

However, corporal punishment – mainly spanking – has been common and has been used for crimes such as theft, adultery and alcohol consumption.

Amnesty International last week called the Taliban government’s death penalty policy “a grave affront to human dignity.”

“Carrying out executions in public increases the cruelty inherent in the death penalty,” he said in a statement.

China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States were respectively ranked as the world’s most prolific practitioners of the death penalty in 2022, according to Amnesty International.

Law and order are central to the harsh ideology of the Taliban, which emerged from the chaos of a civil war after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989.

During his first government, from 1996 to 2001, public executions were common.

One of the most infamous images from that era showed the 1999 execution of a woman wearing a full-coverage burqa in a stadium in Kabul. She had been accused of killing her husband.