The Taliban has carried out its first public execution since its return to power in Afghanistan last year, marking a brutal shift in the country.
The execution took place in western Farah province in front of hundreds of spectators and many top Taliban officials, according to Zabihullah Mujahid, the top Taliban government spokesman.
The now-deceased man, identified as Tajmir, was from the Herat province and was convicted of killing another man five years ago then stealing his motorcycle and mobile phone.
Taliban security forces had arrested Tajmir after the victim’s family accused him of the crime and the victim's father shot him three times with an assault rifle in the public execution.
Mr Mujahid said the decision to carry out the punishment was "made very carefully" following approval by three of the country’s highest courts and the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.
The spectators included acting interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani and acting deputy prime minister Abdul Ghani Baradar, as well as the country’s chief justice, acting foreign minister and acting education minister.
The killing by the Taliban marks a huge change in the country's way of life and marks a step in the resumption of the group’s rule with its hardline ideology and interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.
When the Taliban previously ruled the country in the late 1990s, public executions, floggings and stoning of those convicted of crimes in Taliban courts were commonplace.
Last week, Afghanistan's Taliban rulers said that over two days 10 women and 11 men were lashed for crimes of theft, adultery and running away from their homes.
The country's Supreme Court said each of those convicted was "lashed 39 times", in beatings at the main mosque after Friday prayers with people watching as it happened.
And fourteen people were publicly lashed in a football stadium in eastern Afghanistan at the end of November, in what was the first time that the Taliban invited Afghans to witness brutal corporal punishment in a sports stadium since the 1990s.
“Fourteen people, including three women, were lashed in the presence of scholars, authorities and people… for different sins including adultery, robbery and other forms of corruption in a football stadium in Logar [province],” said the Taliban’s Supreme Court.
“Sharia law is the only solution for problems in Afghanistan and must be implemented,” said the deputy governor of Logar, Enayatullah Shuja, following the lashings.
People across the globe were denouncing the brutal lashings and comparing the use of football stadiums in Afghanistan to the World Cup.
One Twitter user said: “While stadiums in Qatar are hosting the World Cup matches these days, stadiums in Afghanistan have once again become a place for public lashing and execution."
