Taliban Claims to Have Killed 6 IS-K Members in Herat City

The sources said that on his first day of arrest, Taliban members had tortured him and broken his neck and hands. According to sources from Herat, the man had died due to the Taliban’s torture.

In the photos obtained by Afghanistan International, bullet marks can be seen in the body and legs of the corpse.

According to sources, the Taliban had arrested the younger brother of the dead man in Herat too.

It is not clear why the Taliban arrested and tortured this man in Herat province. The group has not commented on the incident so far.

The rights watchdog called for an independent strategy and stated that tangible measures are needed to make the Taliban accountable.

The organisation added that this independent investigative special mission can even help the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan with his work.

Amnesty stated that it is required to follow the facts and circumstances of crimes and human rights violations and identify the perpetrators.

While highlighting the blatant human rights abuses such as systematic violations of the rights of Afghan women and girls and the continuation of Taliban crimes in Panjshir, it added that the Taliban has often signalled that it is unwilling to hold impartial investigation into human right abuses by it.

The statement also documented cases of arbitrary arrests, executions, torture and kidnappings by the Taliban, stressing that since the Taliban's dominance, the human rights of at-risk populations, including women, girls and religious and ethnic minorities, have been widely violated.

On the issue of minority, Amnesty stated that it has independently conducted investigation into the Hazara massacre in Afghanistan without any help from the Taliban and hence, the perpetrators are yet to be brought to justice.

In his recorded speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Blinken described the Taliban's order to ban girls from entering secondary schools and universities as part of the Taliban-controlled severe repression of women and girls in Afghanistan.

The US Secretary of State referred to the Taliban's order to ban women's work in non-governmental organisations and said that 29 million people depend on humanitarian aid for their survival in Afghanistan.

The Taliban imposed severe restrictions on girls and women after they have taken control of Afghanistan in August 2021. According to these Taliban orders, girls do not have the right to education in schools or universities.

In an interview with the Special Inspector General for Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR), Karzai said that Ashraf Ghani refused to pay attention to big strategic issues that Afghanistan faced.

Criticising the performance of the former president, he said, "In the last four years, 45,000 security forces had been martyred. Imagine these numbers. I mean, these are not just simple numbers, these are huge numbers. How can you relate to that?”

Karzai’s remarks on the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban have been included in a SIGAR report released on February 28.

The report stated that along with corruption and dependence on the US military, ethnocentric appointments by Ashraf Ghani had reduced the morale and capabilities of the former security forces of Afghanistan.

According to SIGAR, while corruption had weakened the Afghan army, there was no political will to combat it.

McCaul also urged the US administration to impose wider visa restriction sanctions against Taliban officials.

In his letter, McCaul stressed that under the Taliban’s rule, Afghan women and girls have been forced to hide away inside their homes, have been prevented from working, left out of humanitarian aid deliveries, barred from seeking healthcare without a male escort, banned from receiving an education above the 6th grade, tortured, forced to marry, and blocked from leaving the country.

He also said that women’s rights defenders in Afghanistan are persecuted, jailed, and murdered by the Taliban.