The Taliban say they shot dead four suspected kidnappers and later hung their bodies at a street corner in the Afghan city of Herat.
The horrific demonstration came a day after a notorious Taliban official warned of the resumption of harsh punishments such as the death penalty and mutilation.
A local official said the men were killed in a gunfight after a businessman and his son were allegedly taken hostage.
A body was hung from a crane in the city center, local residents said.
A local shopkeeper, Wazir Ahmad Siddiqui, told the Associated Press-AP that four bodies were brought to the intersection, one was hung there and the other three were taken to other intersections in the city for display.
Maulvi Shire, the deputy governor of Herat, said the bodies had been displayed in such a way as to prevent further abductions. He said Taliban members shot and killed a businessman and his son after receiving news of their abduction. The businessman and his son were later released.
However, the BBC could not confirm the circumstances under which the men were killed.
However, the photo shared through social media showed a bloody body in the back of a pick-up truck where one’s body was hanging from a crane.
Another video shows a man hanging from a crane with a sign on his chest: “The kidnappers will be punished in this way.”
Since taking power in Afghanistan on August 15, the Taliban have been promising a somewhat more flexible regime than their predecessors.
But in the meantime, numerous cases of human rights violations have been reported across the country.
Mullah Nuruddin Turabi, the Taliban’s notorious former religious police chief who is in charge of prisons under the new government, warned on Thursday that harsh punishments such as the death penalty and mutilation would resume in Afghanistan. He described the punishments as “necessary to ensure safety”.
In an interview with the AP, he said the punishments would not be carried out in public like the Taliban regime in the 1990s. During the group’s five-year rule, executions were often carried out in public at Kabul’s sports stadiums or in the vast expanse of the Eidgah mosque.
Mr. on the UN sanctions list. “Everyone in the stadium criticized us for the punishment, but we never said anything about their law and punishment,” Turabi said, quoting their previous sentences.
In August, Amnesty International said Taliban fighters were behind the killings of nine members of the persecuted Hazara minority.
Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Calamard, said at the time that the “cold-blooded massacre” was “a reminder of the Taliban’s past record and a terrible indicator of what the Taliban regime could bring.
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