KABUL: Afghan police have arrested nine suspects after a mob was filmed stamping on a woman and smashing a brick on her head after she was accused of burning the Holy Qur’an. The mob set her body ablaze, officials said on Friday.

General Farid Afzali, the head of the police criminal investigation department, told AFP the woman, whose body was dumped in the Kabul river, had been undergoing psychiatric treatment for the past four years.

President Ashraf Ghani has ordered an investigation into the incident, condemning the “act of extreme violence,” in a statement released by his office.

“No individual is allowed to make oneself a judge and use violence to punish others in degrading manners,” the statement said.

“Launching personal trials and choosing who to punish stands in clear contradiction to Shariah and Islamic justice.”

An Afghan cleric and a police official defended the lynching.

“I am warning the government not to arrest those who did this, because it will mean an uprising,” said the cleric at the Wazir Akbar Khan mosque.

Another Afghan man boasted on Facebook of participating in the lynching, saying that “pious people of Kabul, including myself, killed her and then burned her. Her place is in hell.”

A spokesman in the Kabul police chief’s office also appeared to justify the killing, saying the woman had deliberately insulted Islam.