Thu, Nov 20, 2008 page5

• Afghans push for return to public executions

  ‘GATHERING OF PEOPLE’ The religious council in western Afghanistan called for public executions ‘as a lesson’ to criminals, and the president said he may allow it for one case

  • AFP
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  Afghans, encouraged by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s decision to execute seven convicted criminals this month, are calling for a return to Taliban-era public executions to deal with a surge in crime.

  Rights groups and some of the governments funding post-Taliban Afghanistan recoiled at the executions, the first batch in a year, saying shortcomings in the notoriously inefficient and corrupt judicial system cast doubt on the legitimacy of trials.

  But Afghans wholeheartedly welcomed them, with one newspaper praising the move in an editorial entitled “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  

  An alleged murderer is knelt on the center spot of the soccer pitch in front of a crowd of some 35,000 men at the National Stadium in Kabul moments before his death on March 13, 1998.

  PHOTO: AFP

  A council of women in the capital late last month called on Karzai to go one step further and have death sentences — usually by firing squad or hanging — carried out in public, as they were under the 1996-2001 Taliban regime.

  The president said at the time this was not something he would support. But at the weekend he told reporters he would consider public executions for those behind an acid attack on schoolgirls in the southern city of Kandahar last week.

  If advised by the Supreme Court and religious clerics, “I will accept public execution so people can see those who have carried out such barbaric acts ... are executed in front of the world’s eyes,” he said.

  Meanwhile the religious council for provinces in western Afghanistan last week issued a statement calling for, among other things, public executions “as a lesson” to criminals.

  This would “put horror and fear in the hearts of criminals and those who plan crime, and crime will decrease,” said the council’s spokesman, Farooq Hussaini.

  A preacher at a prominent mosque in the capital and a lecturer at Kabul University, Aiaz Niazai, said Afghanistan needed the death penalty now more than ever.

  The Koran says executions should take place in “a gathering of people” so people learn from the punishment and are assured that the crime will not happen again, he said.

  That such executions were carried out by the Taliban does not necessarily make them wrong, the cleric said.

  “We do not count everything the Taliban did as negative,” he said.

  Public executions also reassure people that the right person is punished for a crime, said Kabul resident Mohammed Naiem.

  “If they are hidden, as Karzai says they should be, it is possible for it to be carried out on someone who is against the government or for another political issue,” he said.

  Government employee Ahmad Zia said the future of Afghanistan depended on strict punishment with its people “volatile” after 30 years of war and suffering from high levels of illiteracy.

  “Yes, 100 percent they should be punished in front of people,” he said. “This is so others should learn and stop bad works. With hidden executions only some people might even know that it has even happened.”

  Zia acknowledged there may be failings in the judicial system and said the courts should not be able to judge on political cases as they were not independent.

  Deputy Justice Minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai would not be drawn on public executions or allegations of weaknesses in the system but said the death penalty was necessary in a place like Afghanistan.

  “In a country where 90 percent of the population is illiterate, this is a lesson for those involved in committing crime,” he said.

  “The international community understands the rate of crime, especially abduction, murder and terrorism, is going up day by day,” he said.

  About 120 more sentences of capital punishment were awaiting Karzai’s final go-ahead, Hashimzai said.

  The UN, the EU and Norway have condemned the recent executions, with the UN’s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, saying there was a grave risk that innocent people may be put to death.
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