Taliban kill woman for divorce

Taliban militants in Afghanistan have shot dead a woman who divorced her husband and remarried, officials told BBC.

The killing took place in north-western Badghis province. There are some reports that the woman’s husband had authorised the separation from abroad.

But when he returned to Afghanistan, he petitioned a self-appointed Taliban court against her remarriage. The Taliban deny carrying out the killing.

Divorce is taboo in the country, especially for women.

Officials said the militants forced the woman, whose name has been given as Aziza, to go to her father’s house, where they shot her.

Local politician Naser Nazari said the woman, thought to be 25, was killed on Saturday.

“Her former husband authorised one of his relatives here to divorce Aziza,” he told Pajhwok news.

It reported that she then married another man but when her husband returned from working in Iran he denied divorcing her and went to the militants.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi told the BBC the cause of the killing was a family feud.

He said the Taliban had already detained two men involved in the case and pledged to “punish them according to Sharia law”.

There are regular reports of the Taliban putting women to death in areas they control after accusing them of adultery or other alleged transgressions.

They carried out the public killing of women – usually over alleged adultery – in the main stadium in the capital, Kabul, when they were in power in the country in the 1990s.