Taliban accused of shooting bound young man dead in Herat
Local sources in Herat say a 30-year-old man was tortured and beaten before being shot dead by people affiliated with the Taliban administration in the city, with his hands tied. The incident has once again highlighted concerns over extrajudicial killings and the lack of a transparent judicial process under Taliban rule.
According to the sources, the man was named Abdul Qadir Pahlawanzada and was shot at around 5 p.m. last Friday in the fourth police district of Herat city, at Post No. 1 in front of a fuel station. A video obtained by media outlets shows a young man being shot by an armed person after being tortured and while his hands are tied.
Relatives of Abdul Qadir say that if he was accused of a crime by the Taliban administration, he should have been summoned and handed over to the administration’s judicial authorities, not shot in public with his hands tied. The young man’s mother has also called on senior Taliban officials to investigate her son’s case.
The sources also said that in the video, Seyed Ahmad Mohammadi, the Taliban administration’s police chief in the Pashtun Zarghun district, his brother, and his brother-in-law can be seen. According to the same sources, the police chief’s brother-in-law was the one who carried out the shooting.
The sources claim the motive for the killing stemmed from a family agreement, and that the Taliban police chief had previously agreed with his brother-in-law in exchange for this killing to marry his sister to him. These claims have not yet been independently verified, and the Taliban administration has said nothing about the matter.
Sources had previously confirmed that one person was killed on Friday in Herat by members of the Taliban administration. Herat is one of Afghanistan’s major provinces in the west, and similar reports of violent conduct outside formal judicial procedures have previously been published from some areas there.
