Gun-toting Taliban militants watch Afghan league final football match from the stands before presenting cup to the winning side amid PR drive
Gun-toting militants have been pictured watching an Afghan league final football match from the stands before presenting the cup to the winning side amid a PR drive.
Fans and Taliban officials watched the game in the city of Herat, Afghanistan, after the Islamist terror group took control over the country on Sunday.
Prayer was performed on the pitch at half-time, with Maulvi Shir Ahmad seen presenting the cup afterwards.
The group has been at pains to present a reformed image since marching into Kabul this weekend after US president Joe Biden's abandonment of Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the future of Afghan women remains uncertain, with women's rights severely suppressed when the Taliban last ruled the country between 1996 and 2001.
Previously, Afghan women were not allowed to work, study, or be treated by male doctors unless accompanied by a male chaperone. Individuals who violated the sexist laws were imprisoned, publicly flogged, and even executed.
With the lives of many of her football team-mates under threat, national team captain Shabnam Mobarez, 25, who is currently residing in the United States, has asked the world football governing body to intervene in the situation in her home country.
And earlier this week, male Afghan national youth team footballer Zaki Anwari, 19, died when he became trapped in the landing gear of a US evacuation flight in a desperate attempt to flee the Taliban.
There is mounting evidence that the hardline Islamist regime is anything but reformed from the despotic jihadists of 20 years ago, who brutally oppressed women and allied themselves with Al Qaeda terrorists.
Taliban official Maulvi Shir Ahmad gives the cup after the Afghan league final football match in Herat, Afghanistan on Friday. The group has been at pains to present a reformed image since marching into Kabul this weekend
Taliban official Shir Ahmad watches the match in Herat, Afghanistan on August 20. Meanwhile, the future of Afghan women remains uncertain, with women's rights severely suppressed when the Taliban last ruled the country between 1996 and 2001
Prayer is performed on the pitch at half-time of the football match on Friday after the Taliban took control over the country
Now those realities are being exposed, and Afghanistan's new rulers have proven beyond what little doubt there was that they are just as bloodthirsty and tyrannical as their equivalents from two decades ago.
The latest footage to emerge from within Afghanistan shows Taliban fighters attacking anyone carrying an Afghan national flag in at least a dozen incidents primarily in the capital Kabul.
It comes after human rights group Amnesty International revealed that Taliban fighters massacred nine ethnic Hazara men after taking control of the country's Ghazni province last month, with eyewitnesses giving harrowing accounts of the killings.
Six men were shot and three were tortured to death, including one man who was strangled with his own scarf and had his arm muscles sliced off during the atrocity, which took place between 4-6 July in the village of Mundarakht, Malistan district, the group revealed.
In another revenge killing, one regional police chief who stood against the Taliban was executed in cold blood by the jihadist group, local reports say.
Shocking video footage being circulated on the internet shows the kneeling handcuffed and blindfolded figure of General Haji Mullah Achakzai, chief of Badghis Province near Herat, being gunned down in a hail of bullets.
Footage posted online shows Taliban fighters attacking anyone carrying an Afghan national flag in at least a dozen incidents primarily in the capital Kabul.
One video appears to show a heavily armed militant jumping out of a pickup filled with Taliban and pulling his gun on a man on a bicycle, who is shrouded in an Afghan flag.
Fans and Taliban officials watch the match in Herat, Afghanistan, on Friday. Earlier this week, male Afghan national youth team footballer Zaki Anwari, 19, died when he became trapped in the landing gear of a US evacuation flight
Fans and Taliban officials watch the match on August 20. Meanwhile, a leaked UN dossier says the Taliban are 'arresting and/or threatening to kill or arrest family members of target individuals unless they surrender themselves to the Taliban'
Fans and Taliban officials seen at the game on Friday, after the group took control of the country on Sunday
The camouflage-wearing militant is seen hastily taking the black, red, and green national emblem off the cyclist before he lashes out and slaps the man in the face.
He then is seen walking back to a pickup adorned with the white and black Taliban flag and filled with militants. He then appears to angrily scrunch up the Afghan flag and put it on the floor of the pickup.
A second video posted online shows a Taliban fighter attacking an Afghan who was carrying the national flag, with his gun.
Footage shows the militant hit the man in the back of the head with the butt of his gun as he tries to flee. The fighter then turns the barrel of the gun on the man and thrusts it towards him several times, but does not threaten to shoot.
The fighter then turns the gun again and raises the weapon above his head before bringing it down on the defenceless man, who raises his arms to protect himself.
Prayer is performed on the pitch at half-time of the match in Herat. There is mounting evidence that the hardline Islamist regime is anything but reformed from the despotic jihadists of 20 years ago, who brutally oppressed women and allied themselves with Al Qaeda terrorists
Fans and Taliban officials watch the match in Herat on Friday after the group took control of the country on Sunday
The video then pans to a Taliban fighter holding the national flag after apparently seizing it from the man.
Despite the Taliban's claims of an 'amnesty' there is also mounting evidence that they are making it hard for any of their opponents to make it to the safety of Kabul airport and a US evacuation flight.
Terrifying video shows fighters spraying assault rifle bullets just yards away from women and children gathered at the airport's perimeter.
A leaked UN dossier says the Taliban are 'arresting and/or threatening to kill or arrest family members of target individuals unless they surrender themselves to the Taliban.'
It was filed to the UN by the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, a group which provides intelligence on global conflicts.
That report followed the emergence of video the execution of General Haji Mullah Achakzai near Herat.
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