Afghan rights group investigates Taliban video showing 'woman being stoned'

Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) launched an investigation on Tuesday into a video which purportedly shows an Afghan woman being stoned to death by the Taliban.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's president, Ashraf Ghani, said the killing in the footage, circulating across Afghan social media, was an act of "cruelty and atrocity".

The video, which is too distressing to share, shows a woman cowering and screaming as she is pelted with stones in front of a crowd of onlookers.

Laila Haidari, a prominent Afghan activist, said on Saturday that the Taliban had stoned the woman "a few days ago" in Ghor province. 

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"The intensity of their violence and what they can do against women in the absence of law and order is clearly visible," she said.

"We have to think about how we can stand up against this approaching horror."

Yet the Taliban have dismissed the claims surrounding the footage.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed that the incident was a notorious case in 2015, where a woman known as Rokshana was stoned to death for adultery, in Ghor province.

Stoning remains illegal under the Afghan constitution, but is seen as a "legitimate punishment" by the Taliban.

The method was commonly used by the Taliban regime, when it ruled the country between 1996 and 2001, whereby convicted adulterers were publicly stoned or shot in front of large crowds.

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