A witness said the Taliban hung a body from a crane in a city square in western Afghanistan: report
AP Photo
- The Taliban on Saturday hung a dead body from a crane in the town square in the western Afghanistan city of Herat, the Associated Press reported.
- Four bodies were displayed in the main square while three others were displayed elsewhere in the city, a witness told the AP.
- The Taliban said the four people displayed in the town square were killed by police because they participated in a kidnapping.
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The Taliban on Saturday hung a dead body from a crane in the city square in the western Afghanistan city of Herat, a witness to the event told the Associated Press.
According to the report, Wazir Ahmad Seddiqi, who owns a pharmacy in the square, said the Taliban brought four bodies to the main square while three others were displayed elsewhere in the city.
Seddiqi told the AP that the Taliban said the four people displayed in the town square had participated in a kidnapping and were killed by police, according to the report.
According to the AP, a Taliban-appointed police chief said the four men were killed in crossfire when a father and son were abducted by the kidnappers. A civilian and Taliban fighter were wounded while the four kidnappers were killed in the exchange of gunfire, the police chief Ziaulhaq Jalali said, according to the AP.
Taliban co-founder Mullah Nooruddin Turabi previously told the Associated Press that it planned to once again carry out executions and amputations of hands as punishment, according to the report, an indication the group plans to resume the harsh tactics it employed when it previously ruled in Afghanistan despite its earlier claims it planned to rule more moderately.
"Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments," Turabi told the AP earlier this week. "No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran."
The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August, seizing city after city with little push back from the Afghanistan military. It took the country's capital city on August 15 as the country's president fled Afghanistan and the US military underwent a rapid withdrawal from the country after a two-decade occupation.
The Taliban had been booted from control in Afghanistan in 2001 when the US entered the country.