A report by Hasht-e Subh Daily has found that women prisoners have been tortured and sexually assaulted by the Taliban. The report stated that the Afghan female prisoners were subjected to sexual abuse by the Taliban under pressure and after torture.
The report is based on interviews with the victims, doctors, and other sources, and highlights the situation of 90 Afghan women who have been arrested and imprisoned in Jawzjan, Faryab, and Samangan provinces after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.
The Daily said that these women have been jailed on charges of morality, theft, fraud, and running away from home.
The female victims and doctors have revealed shocking details about the Taliban’s prisons.
Health workers in the gynaecological department of Faryab, Samangan, and Jawzjan hospitals have said, "In the past year, the Taliban have brought in 48 women to these hospitals for treatment at night times, who were subjected to physical torture and sexual assault. They were bleeding profusely."
The Daily added that the Taliban did not allow the doctors in charge to register these female victims at the hospitals.
Apparently, the local Taliban authorities in these provinces force women prisoners to submit to their sexual demands under pressure and torture.
The Taliban officials have not filed a criminal case against these women and kept them in prison. Also, they did not allow the families of the prisoners to visit them.
Sexual assaults by Taliban members have led to unwanted pregnancies of imprisoned women too. A doctor told the Daily, "At least 13 female prisoners who had been raped in prison by the Taliban were transferred to the obstetrics and gynaecology department of this hospital at night for abortion."
According to him, most of these women had abortions in the first three months of pregnancy and had been taken back to prison.
The newspaper quoted the victims as saying that some of these women had been released from the Taliban prison after paying bribes.
