Afghanistan's Taliban rulers carry out public execution in sports stadium in eastern city

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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities carried out a public execution at a stadium in the eastern city of Khost on Tuesday, putting to death a man who the country’s Supreme Court said had killed 13 members of a family, including several children, earlier this year.

Tens of thousands of people, including relatives of the victims, attended the execution in the sports stadium, which the Supreme Court said was the 11th carried out since the Taliban seized power in 2021 in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.

United Nations’ Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan Richard Bennet posted on X earlier Tuesday that reports had suggested the public execution was imminent and called for it to be halted.

“Public executions are inhumane, a cruel and unusual punishment, and contrary to international law,” he posted.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have imposed a strict interpretation of Sharia law, which has included a return of public executions, as well as bans on Afghan women and girls from secondary school and university education and from most forms of employment.

According to a statement by the Supreme Court, the execution was ordered after a death sentence was passed down by a court, an appeals court and the top ccourt itself, and approved by Afghanistan’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada.

The man was shot to death by a relative of those he was convicted of having killed, said Khost police spokesman Mustaghfir Gorbaz. The man had been convicted along with anothers of entering a family home in Khost province and shooting to death an extended family, including nine children and their mother, Gorbaz said.

The victims’ relatives had been offered the option of forgiveness and reconciliation that would have spared the man’s life, but instead requested the death penalty, the court said.

During their previous rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the Taliban regularly carried out public executions, floggings and stonings.