Taliban hang body in public, signal return to past tactics
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
The Taliban hanged a dead body from a crane parked in a city square in Afghanistan on Saturday in a gruesome display that signaled the hard-line movement’s return to some of its brutal tactics of the past.
Taliban officials initially brought four bodies to the central square in the western city of Herat, then moved three of them to other parts of the city for public display, said Wazir Ahmad Seddiqi, who runs a pharmacy on the edge of the square.
Taliban officials announced that the four were caught taking part in a kidnapping earlier Saturday and were killed by police, Seddiqi said. Ziaulhaq
Jalali, a Taliban-appointed district police chief in Herat, said later that Taliban members rescued a father and son who had been abducted by four kidnappers after an exchange of gunfire. He said a Taliban fighter and a civilian were wounded by the kidnappers, and that the kidnappers were killed in crossfire.
An Associated Press video showed crowds gathering around the crane and peering up at the body as some men chanted.
“The aim of this action is to alert all criminals that they are not safe,” a Taliban commander who did not identify himself told the AP in an on-camera interview conducted in the square.
Since the Taliban overran Kabul on Aug. 15 and seized control of the country, Afghans and the world have been watching to see whether they will re-create their harsh rule of the late 1990s, which included public stonings and limb amputations of alleged criminals, some of which took place in front of large crowds at a stadium.
After one of the Taliban’s founders said in an interview with The Associated Press this past week that the hard-line movement would once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, the U.S. State Department said such acts “would constitute clear gross abuses of human rights.”
Spokesman Ned Price told reporters Friday at his briefing that the United States would “stand firm with the international community to hold perpetrators of these – of any such abuses – accountable.”
The Taliban’s leaders remain entrenched in a deeply conservative, hardline worldview, even if they are embracing technological changes, such as video and mobile phones.
Also Saturday, a roadside bomb hit a Taliban car in the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, wounding at least one person, a Taliban official said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. The Islamic State group affiliate, which is headquartered in eastern Afghanistan, has said it was behind similar attacks in Jalalabad last week that killed 12 people.
BERLIN
In his first run for chancellor, Christian Democrat Armin Laschet risks losing the office that Angela Merkel held tight for conservatives for 16 years.
So a day before the nation’s most competitive election in almost two decades, Merkel joined him on the campaign trail one last time to stump for her would-be successor.
For voters who believe it makes little difference who the next chancellor is, Merkel sold Laschet as a leader who, like herself, will be a steady hand at the tiller of Europe’s largest economy.
“I can say from experience that in the political life of a chancellor, there are points at which it’s anything but irrelevant who governs,” Merkel said
Saturday in a packed square in Laschet’s home town of Aachen, a city on the western edge of the republic that was once the seat of power for Charlemagne.
With voters signaling a desire for change, Germany’s long-time leader is looking to salvage her own legacy after sitting on the sidelines for most of the campaign.
Laschet revived the specter of a possible Social Democratic-led alliance under Olaf Scholz with the anti-capitalist Left party, saying voters “need to use these final hours” to ensure a leftward tilt doesn’t happen.
The election’s unexpected front-runner, Scholz made his official closing pitch on Friday to voters in Cologne, long a bastion for the SPD. On Saturday he appeared in Potsdam with local officials.
“We want a new beginning, a government led by the SPD,” Scholz told a crowd in central Cologne, the largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, where Laschet has governed as state premier since 2017.
He drew applause by pledging guaranteed pension levels and a hike in the minimum wage.
The finance minister claimed credit for his part in shepherding Germany through the pandemic, helped by $468 billion in spending. He also blasted Laschet for promising to cut taxes.
Laschet, 60, also campaigned with Merkel in Munich on Friday.
Should Laschet pull off a win, he’d also most likely lobby the Greens and FDP — a constellation that Merkel attempted in 2017 only to see it collapse when FDP Chairman Christian Lindner walked away.