KABUL, 25 April 2005 — Afghan police launched an investigation yesterday into reports that a woman in northeastern Afghanistan was stoned to death for allegedly committing adultery, officials said.
The incident took place on Friday in the Urgu district of Badakhshan province some 370 kilometers north of capital Kabul. Amina, a 29 year-old married woman, was publicly stoned to death on the basis of a district court’s decision, officials said.
“We got reports that on Friday a woman was stoned to death for adultery based on the decision of local Mulla Mohammed Yusof in Urgu district,” Lt. Gen. Shah Jahan Noori, the provincial police chief, told AFP.
“We have sent a delegation to the area to verify the truth of the issue,” Shah said, adding that authorities would “strongly condemn this irresponsible act” if they could confirm it was true. “It is under the authority of a court to make such decisions not locals. The culprits will be arrested and brought to justice,” he added.
A witness, Mujibur Rahman, told Reuters that Amina was dragged out of her parent’s house by local officials and her husband who stoned her to death while the man was flogged, whipped 100 times and then freed. Amina’s stoning was the first one in Afghanistan since President Hamid Karzai was installed to power after the US-led forces overthrew the Taleban’s government, Noori said.
Meanwhile, four militants and an Afghan soldier were killed in a gunbattle near Gayan city in southeast Paktika province in the latest burst of violence along the Afghan-Pakistan border, the US military said in a statement. Another Afghan soldier was wounded in the same firefight. Afghan soldiers and US troops discovered up to 20 armed individuals along the Afghanistan border with Pakistan early Thursday morning and fired at them before calling in air support.
“Afghan security forces and coalition forces engaged the individuals with small arms and called in artillery fire and US Air Force A-10 close air support onto the insurgents’ positions, killing two,” the statement said.
