Afghan authorities have implemented Shari’ah punishments on nine people – including amputations and flogging – in public in a sports stadium in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan.
Local reports and witnesses say the Islamic Emirate cut the hands off four people who were found guilty of theft.
Five others, who were arrested for pre-marital affairs and other criminal offences, were flogged.
A crowd came to the Ahmadshahi Stadium to watch the punishments being carried out.
Kandahar is the centre of IEA rule and the city where the leader, Sheikh Hibatullah Akhundzada, resides.
The IEA started publicly implementing Shari’ah punishments in August last year in Zabul province when two women and a man were publicly lashed 39 times after being convicted of adultery.
According to local media, the couple were living together unmarried and engaging in a sexual relationship. In addition to lashings, the convicted man was sentenced to six years in prison and the convicted woman was given two years.
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A second woman who lived in the same building as the couple was whipped 20 times and sentenced to six years in prison for permitting the sexual relationship to occur.
Separately, two men were given 20 lashes after being arrested on charges of robbery in the same province. They were sentenced to one month in prison.
This came after the leader of the Islamic Emirate, Sheikh Hibatullah, called for the implementation of Shari’ah law in Afghanistan, stressing the need to preserve Islamic values.
He told a gathering of provincial governors in Kandahar that there was a need to solve every problem through Shari’ah and not man-made laws.
“Over the past 20 years, there have been a lot of anti-Shari’ah and Islam rhetoric and laws which are made by the people are not implementable,” Islamic Emirate spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid was also quoted as saying.
