KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Taliban Justice Minister Abdul Hakim Sharei has dismissed and detained four Hazara employees of the group’s justice department in central Bamyan province, holding them in what local sources describe as his “private prison” in Kabul.
The four individuals — three staff members and one service worker — have been detained since Saturday, Aug. 22, and there is no information about their condition or fate, sources in Bamyan said
Three of those detained were named as Khan Ali Nabizada, Jawad Samimi and Mohammad Azizi. They had held fifth- and sixth-grade positions in the Bamyan justice department.
According to the sources, the four collectively resigned following sustained pressure from the Taliban head of the Bamyan justice department and disagreements with the department’s administrative manager. They were subsequently summoned to Kabul by Sharei. After being dismissed from their posts, they were imprisoned. The minister regarded the collective resignation as an act of “defiance” and disobedience, the sources said.
The Taliban Ministry of Justice and its Bamyan department have not commented on the detentions.
Sharei has repeatedly faced accusations in recent years of maintaining a private prison and of arbitrarily detaining and imprisoning people, particularly members of the Shia-Hazara community. During Muharram this year, he was accused of arresting and detaining a number of Shia and Hazara elders over the raising of mourning flags in some areas of Kabul.
Earlier this month, several Shia scholars and elders issued a joint statement describing the minister’s treatment of the community as “intolerable.” They accused him of forcibly displacing members of the community from their townships across Afghanistan, including in Kabul, and of repeatedly insulting, detaining and imprisoning Shia religious scholars, community leaders and residents without court orders or proof of wrongdoing.
“The collection of these behaviors and actions by the justice minister constitutes systematic discrimination and an attempt to forcibly displace Hazara and Shia people, and its continuation is intolerable,” the statement said.
