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Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s foreign minister, arrived in New Delhi on Thursday for his first official visit to India.

Gianni Tognioni, secretary of the People’s Tribunal said that the tribunal’s goal is to build a global consensus against the Taliban for depriving Afghan women and girls of their rights.

Coinciding with the opening of the People’s Tribunal on Taliban Crimes in Madrid, the Taliban’s Supreme Court announced that three men and two women were publicly flogged in Kapisa province on charges of what it described as “extramarital relations.”

The Taliban have restricted access to several major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, multiple sources told Afghanistan International on Tuesday night, 7 October.

Orzala Nemat, the prosecutor for the People’s Tribunal on the Rights of Afghan Women, has named senior Taliban figures, including Hibatullah Akhundzada, Sirajuddin Haqqani as the group’s accused leaders.

Gianni Tognoni, a representative of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, said on the opening day of the tribunal’s hearings that Afghan women and girls are suffering the gravest violations of their rights under Taliban rule.

Residents in multiple Afghan provinces say access to Facebook and Instagram has been blocked, with the platforms only reachable through virtual private networks (VPNs), according to reports received by Afghanistan International.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister, that the positive results of Moscow’s recognition of the Taliban government “will soon become evident.”

The Taliban’s Minister of Commerce said the group and Kazakhstan have agreed to increase their annual trade volume to $3 billion and accelerate implementation of the “Afghan-Trans” railway project.

The Taliban have shut down fibre-optic internet services in Kandahar for the second time in a week, sources told Afghanistan International.

Participants in the seventh Moscow Format meeting on Afghanistan voiced support for an “independent, peaceful Afghanistan free of terrorism and drugs,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

Pakistan’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Mohammad Sadiq Khan, said that representatives from Pakistan, Russia, China, and Iran discussed the need for an “independent, peaceful Afghanistan” during their recent quadrilateral meeting in Moscow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that the presence of foreign military forces in Afghanistan could spark new regional conflicts, urging Western nations to abandon “destabilising policies” toward the country.

The Taliban have granted licences to Uzbek companies to explore and extract hydrocarbon resources, including oil and gas, in Afghanistan. Uzbekistan’s energy minister said that if stability continues, Afghanistan could become his country’s key route to the world’s open seas.

The German government has confirmed that its officials held talks with Taliban representatives in Kabul to discuss the deportation of Afghan nationals whose asylum claims were rejected in Germany.

The seventh round of the Moscow Format talks on Afghanistan opened in Russia on Tuesday bringing together officials from Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has welcomed the UN Human Rights Council’s decision to establish an independent investigative mechanism on Afghanistan and called on governments to provide sufficient funding to ensure its effective operation.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced on Monday that representatives from Russia, Iran, China, and Pakistan met in Moscow a day before the seventh round of the Moscow Format consultations on Afghanistan.

China has opposed a resolution adopted by the UN Human Rights Council to establish an independent investigative mechanism into human rights violations in Afghanistan.

Pakistan and Malaysia have jointly called for the formation of an inclusive government in Afghanistan and urged the Taliban to respect the fundamental rights of all Afghans and adhere to its international obligations.

The UN Human Rights Council on Monday approved the establishment of an independent mechanism to investigate and document human rights violations in Afghanistan.