Taliban carries out first public execution since Afghan coup

THE Taliban yesterday put to death a convicted murderer in the first public execution since the group took control of Afghanistan last year.

Leading regime officials watched as the victim’s father shot his son’s killer with an assault rifle before a crowd of hundreds in western Farah province.

The prisoner was convicted of killing another man and stealing his motorcycle and mobile phone five years ago.

Security forces arrested the man, identified as Tajmir, after the victim’s family accused him of the crime.

Tajmir had purportedly confessed to the killing.

The decision to carry out the punishment was “made very carefully”, said Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government spokesman.

He said it had the approval of three of the country’s highest courts and Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban supreme leader. Last month Mr Akhundzada ordered judges to fully enforce the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law, including public executions, stonings and floggings and the amputation of limbs from thieves.

After it overran Afghanistan last year, the Taliban initially promised to safeguard women’s rights.

Earlier this week, schoolgirls were given permission to sit exams in a gesture branded “meaningless” as the majority have been forbidden from studying for more than a year.

The intensive day of testing involved about 140 questions across 17 subjects, according to a Kabul high school principal.

Girls were instructed to wear loose, black clothing and cover their faces and hands, while no male officials, including teachers, were allowed inside the exam halls.

While girls who completed the exams would, theoretically, be able to apply to go to university, it was unlikely many would achieve the grades to do so.

The move to open the exams to female pupils, which were held in 31 out of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, is understood to be an attempt to appease the international community, with more than £2.8billion of central Afghan funds still frozen by the United States.

“Amid international pressure to reopen girls’ schools, the Taliban want to show that they want girls’ education, so that in some way they can benefit from this,” said Prof Zia-ul-rahman Hasrat, of Kabul University.

Lima, a teenager from Kabul, said:. “We didn’t go to school, we didn’t have books and we didn’t study last year, so how can we sit [all these exams] in one day? Do the Taliban think that we are geniuses?”