Kabul: Days after taking power in Afghanistan, the Taliban on Saturday hung the bodies of four kidnappers from cranes after killing them during a shootout in Afghanistan’s western city of Herat. Giving details, Herat province’s deputy governor Mawlawi Shir Ahmad Muhajir said the corpses of the kidnappers were displayed in various public areas on the same day as the killings to teach a “lesson” that kidnapping will not be tolerated.
Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, one of the founders of the Taliban and the chief enforcer of its harsh interpretation of Islamic law when they last ruled Afghanistan, told a news agency that the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public.
Since the Taliban overran Kabul on August 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.
The graphic images of the incident, which have gone viral on social media, showed the bloody bodies on the back of a pick-up truck while a crane hoisted one man up. A crowd of people looked on as armed Taliban fighters gathered around the vehicle.
Another video shared on social media showed a man suspended from a crane at a major roundabout in Herat with a sign on his chest reading: “Abductors will be punished like this”.
Muhajir said security forces were informed that a businessman and his son had been abducted in the city on Saturday morning.
He said that the police shut down the roads out of the city and the Taliban stopped the men at a checkpoint, where an exchange of fire happened.
Muhajir added that before Saturday’s incident, there had been other kidnappings in the city, and the Taliban rescued a boy.
