Afghanistan's president has ordered a probe into the fatal stoning of a young woman in a Taliban-controlled area after she was accused of adultery, a savage punishment that sparked nationwide outrage.
President Ashraf Ghani called the killing a “criminal and un-Islamic” act, according to a statement from his office.
The woman, identified only as Rokhshana, was forced to stand in a deep hole in the ground during the October 24 attack in a village in remote Ghor province of western Afghanistan, said governor spokesman Abdul Hai Khateby.
Khateby said Rokhshana had been captured by the insurgents after she ran away from home, purportedly with a 19-year-old boyfriend.
Islamic court
The Taliban tried them in their Islamic court and pronounced the pair guilty of having sex, the spokesman said.
Stoning is illegal under the Afghan constitution.
The village, about 28 miles north of Ghor's capital, Firozkoh, is controlled by Taliban insurgents “who implement their own barbaric laws,” Khateby said.
In an online video purportedly showing the killing, about a half-dozen men are seen standing around a deep, narrow pit and pelting the woman with rocks while a larger group of men sit on the ground nearby, watching.
The video could not be independently verified.
Stoning is a permissible punishment under traditional Islamic law, or Sharia.
Incidents of stoning are unusual, but not unheard of in Afghanistan, where women are the main victims.
Some material for this report came from AP and AFP.
