Taliban Says Strict Punishment, Executions Will Return to Afghanistan

Taliban official said the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public, The Associated Press reported on Thursday.

In an interview with AP, one of the founders of the Taliban, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, dismissed outrage over the Taliban’s executions in the past, which sometimes took place in front of crowds at a stadium, warning 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 The Associated Press, 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, now in his early 60s, was justice minister and head of the so-called Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Notably, trials and convictions were rarely public and the judiciary was weighted in favor of Islamic clerics, whose knowledge of the law was limited to religious injunctions.

Turabi said that this time, judges — including women — would adjudicate cases, but the foundation of Afghanistan’s laws will be the Quran, noting that the same punishments would be revived.

“Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security,” he said, pointing out that it had a deterrent effect. He said the Cabinet was studying whether to do punishments in public and will “develop a policy.”

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.