On the fifth day of the holy month of Ramadan, Matiullah Wesa, an advocate for girls’ and women’s education in Afghanistan, went to a neighbourhood mosque in Kabul for asr (evening) prayers. As the 30-year-old left the mosque with his younger brother, Samiullah, he was surrounded by a group of armed men who said they were from the General Directorate of Intelligence, the Taliban’s intelligence unit.
“When my brother Samiullah asked them for their IDs, they showed their weapons instead and took [Matiullah] away,” Attaullah Wesa, Matiullah’s elder brother, told Al Jazeera.
