Taliban Accused of Executing 27 ‘Rebel’ Prisoners

Voice of America News reports: “A new investigative report accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers of executing 27 opposition fighters in custody during last month’s military operations in the turbulent northern province of Panjshir.

Afghan Witness (AW), an open-source project run by the U.K.-based nonprofit Center for Information Resilience, studied the allegations and published its findings Tuesday, which contradict earlier Taliban claims of killing the men in battlefield clashes.

The victims were said to be affiliated with the National Resistance Front (NRF), which has been waging an armed resistance against the Taliban since the Islamist group seized power more than a year ago.

AW researchers analyzed dozens of social media videos and photographs to ‘conclusively link’ a group of Taliban fighters to the extrajudicial killings of 10 men in Dara district area.

‘Five men—one facing the executioners on his knees, the others sitting facing away, all blindfolded with hands bound behind their backs—are repeatedly shot for 20 seconds… accompanied by celebratory cries from the large group of [Taliban] fighters,’ the report said, adding that the group of Taliban fighters could be identified with five more men who were later executed…”

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