Business community & public supported the hanging
By Our Special Correspondent
Kabul: Following a successful operation conducted to release hostages, Taliban authorities in the western Afghan city of Herat killed four alleged kidnappers and hung their bodies up in public to deter others.
A spokesperson of local government official confirmed to correspondent of “Islamabad Telegraph ” saying operation was conducted to release a father and his son from captivity of kidnappers who armed.
However, Sher Ahmad Ammar, deputy governor of Herat, told journalists that the men had kidnapped a local businessman and his son and intended to take them out of the city, when they were seen by patrols that had set up checkpoints around the city.
An exchange of gunfire ensued in which all four were killed, while one Taliban soldier was wounded.
” Their bodies were brought to the main square and hung up in the city as a lesson for other kidnappers,” he said.
The two victims were released unharmed, he said.
Media reports quoted Mohammad Nazir, a resident of Herat, as saying that he had been shopping for food near the city’s Mostofiat Square when he heard a loudspeaker announcement calling for public attention. “When I stepped forward, I saw they had brought a body in a pickup truck, then they hung it up on a crane,” he said.
Graphic images posted to social media showed bloody bodies on the back of a pick-up truck while a crane hoisted one man up. Another video showed a man suspended from a crane at a major roundabout in Herat with a sign on his chest reading: “Abductors will be punished like this”.
International media reports quoted Herat Deputy Governor Mawlawi Shir Ahmad Muhajir said the corpses were displayed in various public areas on the same day as the killings to teach a “lesson” that kidnapping would not be tolerated.
Muhajir said security forces received information that a businessman and his son had been abducted in the city on Saturday morning. Subsequently, police shut down the roads out of the city and the Taliban stopped the men at a checkpoint, ensuing an exchange of fire, he said. “As a result of a few minutes of fighting, one of our Mujahideen was wounded and all four kidnappers were killed,” the deputy governor said in a recorded statement.