Afghanistan’s Taliban Interior Ministry spokesman Qari Sayed Khosti has confirmed that four women have been found dead in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The radical Islamist has reported that two people have been arrested: “The detainees admitted in the initial questioning that they invited the women to the house. New investigations are being carried out and the case was referred to the court.
Khosti has not identified the victims, but a source in Mazar-i-Sharif has confessed to AFP that at least one was a women’s rights activist. According to BBC Persian, which cites civil society sources, the four women were friends who were hoping to travel to the Mazar-i-Sharif airport to flee the country.
A human rights group told AFP on condition of anonymity that the women received a call and believed it was an invitation to join an evacuation flight. They were picked up by a car, to later be found dead.
The Taliban yoke
The Taliban, who came to power in Afghanistan last August after a 20-year war against the former US-backed government, are a deeply radical Islamist movement. Under his last government, women could not participate in public life. Since their return to power, many human rights activists have fled the country.
Some of those who remained demonstrated in the streets of Kabul, the capital, to demand respect for their rights and that girls be allowed to attend public secondary schools.
Taliban fighters banned some of the protests, and the government threatened to arrest journalists covering the unauthorized rallies. But the movement’s leaders insist their fighters are not allowed to kill activists and vowed to punish those who do.
