KABUL, 9 October 2007 — Afghanistan has put 15 people to death for various crimes including murder, government officials told AFP yesterday, in the first confirmed executions in more than three years. The convicted criminals were shot dead in a Kabul prison late on Sunday, a senior official said on condition of anonymity.
“Fifteen people who were convicted earlier were executed,” the official said, adding that most had been found guilty of murder. The national head of prisons, Abdul Salaam Asmat, confirmed 15 were put to death at Afghanistan’s largest prison Pul-e-Charki. He refused to give details.
The last known execution by the post-Taleban government of President Hamid Karzai was in April 2004 when military commander Abdullah Shah was killed with a single bullet after being convicted for a spate of murders. A Supreme Court spokesman, Wakil Omari, told AFP that other people were believed to have been executed in secret since then, but he had no details.
Around 300 people are on death row, a judge told AFP on condition of anonymity. They had been sentenced for crimes such as murder, rape, armed robbery, kidnapping and “political crimes” such as bombings and anti-government activities, he said. Karzai has, however, been reluctant to sign their execution orders.
Meanwhile, airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan killed 16 militants fighting under a wanted Uzbek warlord with $200,000 bounty on his head, while a suicide attack against a NATO convoy left two civilians wounded, officials said yesterday.
US forces early Sunday called in the strikes against fighters of Tahir Yuldash, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and an Al-Qaeda operational commander, said Nabi Jan Mullahkhail, the provincial police chief of Paktika province.
The US military late last month released a list of 12 Most Wanted militants in Afghanistan, and Yuldash was one of five listed with the top reward of $200,000. Mullahkhail said one enemy fighter — an Uzbek — was captured during the fighting in the Sorobi district of Paktika and said that the militants from Uzbekistan and Chechnya were fighting under Yuldash.
In southern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber on foot attacked a NATO patrol in Helmand province’s capital of Lashkar Gah yesterday, wounding two civilians but no alliance troops, said provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal. “It did not cause any harm to the NATO troops but two men nearby were badly wounded,” Andiwal told AFP.
