Taliban police in Herat province said they have arrested three young women on charges of running away from home on Monday.
In a statement shared with the media, the police said that the women were arrested from Police District 8 of Herat city.
“These three women were identified and arrested after a search operation,” said Mahmoud Shah Rasouli, the Taliban police spokesman. He did not provide more information about the identities of the women, charges, or circumstances of their arrest, but said that their case had been sent to the Taliban court.
Meanwhile, a member of the Taliban who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, “The arrested women are between the ages of 20 and 30 and were planning to leave Herat.”
He adds that the Taliban arrested these women after they ran away from their home and were reported to police by their relatives.
After the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, they dismantled all systems of support for victims of gender-based violence, leaving nowhere for victims of domestic violence to go.
Two weeks ago, a new documentary, Afghanistan Uncovered was aired on PBS, which showed that the Taliban are arresting and imprisoning women on charges of so-called moral crimes, which could include running away from home or travelling without a male chaperone. The women prisoners are being held there for months without trial. It also documents how the Taliban pressured incarcerated women to marry their members as a way out of prison. In November 2021 a Taliban prison official told the PBS documentary crew that about 90 women were in the prison in Herat.
The Taliban police are regularly announcing that they have arrested women, children, and young men on charges of moral crimes, theft, and other charges. As the Taliban fill prisons, the judicial system is collapsing. The Taliban have dismantled the Afghanistan Independent Bar Association and dismissed thousands of judges, replacing them with their inexperienced and untrained zealot mullahs.
The combination of a collapse of the judicial system and the absence of independent monitoring bodies has created the perfect storm for Taliban human rights abuses.
