In a Taliban headquarters in southern Afghanistan, 12 defendants wait to be tried in a small room covered with a carpet. An improvised cell, where the justice of the new regime is slow to pass.
None of these detainees from Panjwai district have yet seen the judge, who is occupied elsewhere. In the meantime, Taliban soldiers sometimes become judges, jury and executioners, with some rudiments of Islamic law.
They thus decided to keep a 41-year-old businessman, arrested for an unpaid debt, until he repays it to his creditor, explains to AFP the “condemned”, who says his name is Haji Baran.
This quick decision seems to suit him. “For that, Islamic law is good,” he emphasizes.
The establishment of rapid, efficient and equitable Islamic justice is at the heart of the political and ideological project of the Taliban.
Long before the return to power in mid-August, the establishment of Islamic courts was for the Taliban “a means of conquering power”, argues Adam Baczko, researcher specializing in Afghanistan who carried out a field survey on the subject between 2010 and 2016.
“From 2004, in the areas they controlled, people turned to them,” he recalls, because they were “more and more unhappy with the interference of Western troops and the official judicial system that appeared to be corrupt and nepotistic ”.
But three months after their seizure of power, the generalization of Taliban justice is still embryonic.
“The girl agreed”
A few kilometers away, in Kandahar Central Prison, Mansour Maulavi, his deputy director, gives tours of the foul-smelling barracks, where 200 crime suspects are held.
In his hand he holds an electric cable, which can be used to repel and whip any recalcitrant prisoners.
The procedures are the same as those the Taliban had when they were still a rebellion, says Paulavi, who then ran their local clandestine prison.
“Our judges come and decide” the fate of these prisoners “according to Sharia” (Islamic law), he explains.
A man, arrested two months ago while at home with a 14-year-old girl, is taken from his cell.
The young girl “agreed to get married, but not her parents, that’s why they called the Taliban”, says the accused, Mohammad Naeem, 35, sitting cross-legged in the courtyard of the city. jail.
“But I did not touch the girl, they can do tests and check,” he pleads.
If he is found guilty of sexual intercourse outside marriage, and therefore of adultery, in theory he incurs stoning to death. But he shows his confidence in “Islamic law”, which will allow him to show that he has “done nothing wrong”.
Violent punishments
The memory of the cruel and radical corporal punishments inflicted by the Taliban in the 90s (stoning, dead homosexuals crushed under piles of bricks …) still haunts part of the population.
But the Taliban today, who must gain the confidence of the population to consolidate their reign, sometimes seem to want to avoid the most severe penalties, for example by invoking the absence of witnesses.
They also focus on limiting the slippages that could tarnish their image and the respectability they need to find resources and obtain international aid.
“If someone takes it upon themselves to kill a person, even if it is one of our men, he will have to face the law”, assured the spokesman of the government, Zabiullah Mujahid, after that men posing as Taliban killed three wedding guests who had put music there (banned by the Taliban in the 1990s, editor’s note).
This does not prevent the Taliban authorities from using images of violent punishment to fuel fear and deterrence.
On September 26 in Herat (west), they hung from cranes the bodies of four men accused of kidnapping and killed by the police, to “teach the other kidnappers a lesson so that they do not kidnap or harass anyone”, according to the governor of the province Ahmad Muhajir.
“Pledges”
For Adam Baczko, the Taliban are currently trying “to find a way between their ideology, which leads them to be particularly repressive”, on questions of morals in particular, “and a desire to give pledges to international bodies” while respecting a bureaucratic functioning and some standards, including on human rights.
“The simple fact of speaking this language”, without prejudging future actions, is “the most important evolution of the movement since the 1990s”, he underlines.
In the largest prison in Kabul, empty since the Taliban released the detainees in mid-August, one of the officials of the Taliban prison administration, Asadullah Shahnan, is preparing to reopen.
He who was detained for six years in Pul-e-Charkhi prison has a lot to say about the way he was treated. He recalls in particular that on the days of execution, prisoners were taken to the windows and forced to watch.
“We will not do like that,” he assures, suggesting that the Taliban have turned the page of the 1990s, when they flogged or executed convicts in public in stadiums or in city squares.