Taliban co-founder: Strict punishment, executions will return
One of the founders of the Taliban and the chief enforcer of its interpretation of Islamic law when they last ruled Afghanistan said the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi dismissed outrage over the Taliban’s executions in the past, which sometimes took place in front of crowds at a stadium, and he warned the world against interfering with Afghanistan’s new rulers.
“Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments,” Turabi told AP, speaking in Kabul. “No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran.”
Turabi’s comments pointed to how the group’s leaders remain entrenched in a deeply conservative, hard-line worldview, even if they are embracing technological changes.
Turabi was justice minister and head of the so-called Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice during the Taliban’s previous rule.
Turabi said that this time, judges would adjudicate cases, but the foundation of Afghanistan’s laws will be the Quran. He said the same punishments would be revived. He said the Cabinet was studying whether to do punishments in public and will “develop a policy.”
Louisiana federal probe:
A former Louisiana State Police trooper has been charged with a civil rights violation for pummeling a
Black motorist 18 times with a flashlight — the first criminal case to emerge from federal investigations into troopers’ beatings of at least three Black men.
A grand jury Thursday indicted Jacob Brown for the 2019 beating following a traffic stop that left Aaron Larry Bowman with a broken jaw, broken ribs and a gash to his head. Brown was charged with one count of deprivation of rights under color of law, federal prosecutors said.
Brown’s indictment comes as the federal prosecutors on the case are scrutinizing other troopers who punched, stunned and dragged another Black motorist, Ronald Greene, before he died in their custody on a rural roadside. The probe of Greene’s 2019 death has grown to examine whether police brass obstructed justice to protect the troopers who beat the Black motorist after a highspeed chase.
Brown’s attorney, Scott Wolleson, declined to comment. A state police spokesman did not immediately respond to a text message requesting comment but previously released a statement saying Brown “engaged in excessive and unjustifiable actions and failed to report the use of force to his supervisors.”
Hungary summit: Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that he is hopeful the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court will soon overturn abortion rights in the United States.
Pence spoke at a forum devoted to demographics and family values in Budapest, Hungary, where conservative leaders from central Europe expressed their anxieties about falling birthrates in the Western
world and discussed ways to reverse the trend.
“We see a crisis that brings us here today, a crisis that strikes at the very heart of civilization itself. The erosion of the nuclear family marked by declining marriage rates, rising divorce, widespread abortion and plummeting birth rates,” Pence said.
The Budapest Demographic Summit has become a platform for leaders to denounce illegal migration and urge families to have more children.
Britain abortion lawsuit:
A woman with Down syndrome lost a court challenge against the British government Thursday over a law allowing the abortion up until birth of a fetus with the condition.
Heidi Crowter, 26, and two others took the Department of Health and Social Care to court, arguing that part of the Abortion Act is discriminatory and violates the European Convention on Human Rights.
Abortions in England, Wales and Scotland are allowed up till 24 weeks of pregnancy. But the law states that terminations can be allowed up until birth if there’s “a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.”
Two senior judges dismissed the case Thursday after a two-day hearing, concluding that the legislation isn’t unlawful and that it aims to strike a balance between the rights of the unborn child and that of women.
Crowter brought the case with Maire Lea-Wilson, 33, who has a son with Down syndrome, and an unidentified child with the condition. She said she plans to appeal the ruling. Paul Conrathe, a lawyer representing the three claimants, called the judgment disappointing and “out of step with modern attitudes to disability.”
US, Iran nuke talk: The Biden
administration is imploring Iran to quickly return to talks on its nuclear program after a three-month hiatus caused by its government transition, warning that the window for negotiations may soon close.
A senior administration official said Thursday that U.S. patience is wearing thin and that further delays could lead Washington and its partners to conclude a return to the landmark 2015 nuclear deal is no longer worthwhile.
The official, who briefed reporters on condition that he not be identified by name, spoke as diplomats from the remaining parties to the agreement have been meeting Iran’s foreign minister on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly to gauge Tehran’s willingness to return to the talks in Vienna.
While Iran has said it is ready to rejoin the talks, it has not yet offered a date for a resumption, named a negotiating team or indicated that it is willing to pick
up where the negotiations left off in June, according to the U.S. official.
Serbia-Kosovo tensions:
Serbia has raised its troops’ combat readiness on the border with Kosovo amid increasing tensions with its breakaway former province, the Serbian defense minister said Thursday.
Ethnic Serbs in Kosovo were blocking the border for a fourth consecutive day to protest a decision by Kosovo authorities to start removing Serbian license plates from cars entering the country.
There are fears the latest incidents could unleash much deeper tensions between the two Balkan foes. Kosovo has deployed its special police force to the predominantly ethnic Serb-populated area of Kosovo to enforce the new license plate rule. Serbia itself has for years been taking off registration plates from Kosovo-registered cars entering Serbia and Kosovo officials say the new rule is a tit-for-tat measure.