Authorities pardon his father’s killer days after Taliban carried out public execution

A senior Afghan official has granted a pardon to a man sentenced to death for murdering his politician father, a court said Sunday. first public execution Since the Islamists seized power.

Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akunzada last month ordered judges to fully enforce aspects of Islamic law, including public executions, stoning and flogging, and amputation of thieves’ limbs.

But the deputy governor of northern Jawzjan province, Guru Mohammad, has pardoned a man convicted of murdering his father in 1992, Afghanistan’s Supreme Court said in a statement.

A Shariah court in the country convicted Abdul Qayyum of murder and ordered him to be executed as an “eye for an eye” punishment under a hardline judicial system.

However, the lieutenant governor ended the case by forgiving the man.

“The murderer’s family asked me for forgiveness. Today I let go of the kisser (punishment) and forgive him,” a court statement said.

The verdict comes days after the public execution of another man convicted of murder, the first such punishment since the Taliban returned to power last August. This is the first time that

The execution took place on December 7 in western Farah province, where the victim’s father shot the death-row inmate three times with a Kalashnikov rifle.

The culprit had been convicted of murdering another man and stealing a motorcycle and phone.

Local shopkeeper Wahid Shah, who witnessed the execution, said in a telephone interview with CBS News’ Sami Yousafzai, “It was terrifying” and “I left immediately and couldn’t bear to watch any more.”

“We are not against Islamic justice,” said Shah, but accused the Taliban of doing so. extrajudicial killing of “innocent Afghans” outside the country’s Islamic judicial process.

Another Afghan who was there, a man who asked to identify himself as Haji Ahmad, said as a Muslim he “believed in such persecution and punishment”, but “prior to the execution” the full judicial process added that it was necessary.

“The Taliban are killers and killers cannot enforce Sharia law,” he said.

But a third witness told CBS News that justice, like that of Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Wednesday, “will stop bloodshed and lawlessness in a society rife with weapons.”

Supreme leader Akunzada, who has not been photographed or photographed in public since the Taliban returned to power, rules by order from Kandahar, the movement’s birthplace and spiritual center. doing.

During its first rule, which ended in late 2001, the Taliban carried out regular public punishments, including floggings and executions at the capital’s national stadium, and Afghans were encouraged to attend.

They promised a more flexible regime when they seized power again last year, but have since introduced increasingly severe restrictions on the lives of Afghans.

Women, in particular, are increasingly excluded from public life.