Three women were among 12 people flogged in front of thousands of onlookers at a football stadium in eastern Afghanistan, having been found guilty of ‘moral crimes’ including adultery, robbery and gay sex, a Taliban official has told the BBC.
The move could signal a return to the hard-line practices seen in the previous Taliban rule in the 1990s, the BBC reports. It says this is thought to be the second time in a month that the Islamist group has carried out public lashings.
Omar Mansoor Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman for the Logar region in eastern Afghanistan, where the lashings took place, said that all three women were freed after being flogged. Some of the men were jailed, he said, but it is not clear how many.
The men and women received between 21 and 39 lashes each. The maximum number a person could receive is 39, another Taliban official said.
According to the BBC, the flogging in Logar province comes a week after the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, ordered judges to enforce punishments for certain crimes in line with the group’s strict reading of Islamic Sharia law.
The supreme leader’s order is seen as the latest sign that the Taliban is taking a tougher stance on rights and freedoms, having promised to rule more moderately when they returned to power last year.
Under its rule between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban was condemned for regularly carrying out punishments in public, including floggings and executions at the national stadium in Kabul.