Naweed Azami
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
December 3, 2021
Abubakar Siddique
Three days after he was taken into custody, the 30-year-old’s body was found along a riverbank on the outskirts of the southern Afghan city of Lashkar Gah.
The Taliban claimed that Naweed Azami escaped detention. But his family has accused the militant group of torturing and killing him.
“My brother was tortured from head to toe,” Sharifullah Sharafat, Azami’s older brother, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “There were torture marks everywhere on his body. The doctors at the local hospital have confirmed this. They took photos of his body and have video evidence.”
Azami appears to be the latest victim of the Taliban’s campaign of targeted killings in Afghanistan. Despite declaring a general amnesty after it seized power in August, the militant group has been accused of extrajudicially killing civilians and former members of the previous government and armed forces.
The hard-line group has also stifled free speech and used brute force to crush dissent, including violently dispersing peaceful protesters and detaining and beating journalists.
In a report released on November 30, Human Rights Watch said the Taliban has “summarily executed or forcibly disappeared” more than 100 former security force members in just four of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces since taking over the war-torn country.
‘Demand Justice’
Azami was detained in Lashkar Gah on November 25, just days after he criticized the Taliban on Facebook.
In his post, Sharafat said, Azami questioned how the Taliban could keep its promise of paying teachers their salaries when the regime was “surviving on donated food.” Azami deleted the post before he was detained, Sharafat added.
Tens of thousands of government employees have not received a paycheck since the Taliban takeover. The militants said on November 20 that they would start paying overdue salaries, but the announcement was widely met with skepticism.
Since the Taliban regained power, Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy has largely collapsed after many foreign donors suspended assistance. The militant group has received direct aid, including cash and basic food items, from only several countries.
When Azami’s family asked the Taliban where he was being held on November 27, the militants said he had escaped detention.
The next day, Azami’s body was discovered by a group of nomadic tribesmen along the banks of the Helmand River.
“We are demanding justice from the Taliban,” Sharafat said. “If we don’t get justice here, we will take the case to Kabul and raise it with the Taliban’s leaders.”
The family rejected the possibility that Azami, a shopkeeper who had studied agriculture at a local university, was killed over a personal dispute.
‘Hit Him With A Pipe’
Mawlawi Abdul Jabbar, a Taliban prosecutor in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand Province, said a four-man commission was established to probe Azami’s death.
“We have talked to Naweed’s family and those they blame for his killing,” he told Radio Azadi.
Jabbar said several people had been arrested, including the Taliban police and intelligence officers who had detained Azami.
Mohammad Esa Sharif, a Taliban provincial council member who is part of the commission investigating Azami’s death, admitted that the victim was tortured. But he claimed that Azami had escaped detention.
“He was a suspect so [Taliban] intelligence picked him up,” Sharif told Radio Azadi. “They took him to their detention center and were questioning him. He was very strong and resisted detention. Even his watch broke during the scuffle.”
Sharif claimed that Azami made multiple attempts to escape the detention facility before he was successful. After one of his attempts, Sharif said Taliban interrogators “hit him with a pipe a few times.”