The Taliban’s leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzadah, met with the Taliban justices and declared that “sentencing according to the Sharia Law” is compulsory. Akhundzadah insisted on implementing criminal punishments, including “amputation” as a form of punishment.
The Taliban leader ordered the group’s justices to implement Hudod and Qisas punishments, said Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman, on Twitter on Sunday, November 13.
Hudod refers to punishments for specific offenses, while Qisas means retaliation in kind – like taking one’s hand for hand or an eye for an eye.
Haibatullah has ordered the judges to “accurately review cases of robbers, kidnappers, and seditionists,” Mujahid said. “You are obliged to implement Hudod and Qisas for those dossiers which completely match the criteria for Hudod and Qisas [punishments] because [implementing] this sentence [based on] Sharia and my order is compulsory,” he quoted Haibatullah as saying to Taliban judges.
During their first reign in power from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban implemented these punishments, including amputations, in public.
After the collapse of the Taliban government in 2002, these punishments were ruled out over the past two decades.
After the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, a Taliban founder and chief enforcer of the group’s Islamic law, told the Associated Press that they would carry out “executions and amputations of hands” once again.
