The Taliban publicly flogged five people, including two women and a child, on two separate charges in a packed school stadium in Qalat city on Sunday, a Taliban official and witnesses confirmed to Zan Times.
“Today, five people, three of whom were arrested on charges of adultery and two on robbery were flogged and sentenced to prison,” said Rahmatullah Hemad, a Taliban official in Zabul province.
A young woman and a man were each flogged 39 times for extra-marital sex and sentenced to six months in prison.
A 50-year-old woman who is charged with arranging the affair between the couple was also flogged 39 times and sentenced to six years in prison, according to Hemad.
A 15-year-old boy and a man were also flogged on robbery charges, the Taliban official said.
The child was also sentenced to one month in prison.
The public flogging took place in the Shaikh Mutie high school stadium where more than a 1,000 people watched, according to a witness who was present.
Public flogging was common from 1996 to 2001, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan for the first time and violent punishments, such as public floggings, amputation, stonings, and executions earned the Taliban notoriety. After the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, the practice was outlawed. Now, it is widely practised once again.
It is a common punishment for anything the Taliban considers “moral crime,” a category that is open to Taliban interpretation.
A new Frontline documentary on PBS discovered that the Taliban have arrested women for leaving their house without a mahram (a close male family member) and for “moral crime.”
“We found evidence of women jailed by the Taliban without trial and held in secret,” correspondent Ramita Navai says in the Frontline documentary, Afghanistan Undercover.
In an interview with Zan Times, Navai says she heard from many people that the Taliban is using corporal punishments such as public floggings on a massive scale.
