More than 100 awaiting execution in Afghanistan

[Coventina]

Source: Reuters

KABUL (Reuters) - More than 100 convicted murderers, rapists and kidnappers are on death row in Afghanistan awaiting President Hamid Karzai to sign the orders for their execution, a senior judge said on Tuesday.

Crimes such as kidnapping, rape and killing have sharply increased in recent years in Afghanistan where the Taliban, ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, carried out public executions for similar acts.

Five people have been executed since Saturday after Karzai approved the sentences following repeated appeals from many ordinary Afghans to mete out the punishment as enshrined in the country's constitution and ordered by Islam.

"We have 125 people who have been sentenced by various courts to the death penalty and are to be executed after Karzai's approval," said a senior Supreme Court judge who declined to be named.



Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE4AA2WA20081111

---

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

[LynnTheDem]

1. As with Iraq, Afghanistan is WORSE OFF NOW.

But hey, when you have a nation (that would be America in this case) that tortures people -oops I mean "harsh interogation techniques" people such as by cutting their penis, you're gonna be worse off.

[Turbineguy]

2. And that's not even counting

those from the Bush Administration!

Afghanistan was in the Dark Ages well before the U.S. got there.

[ben_meyers]

3. These societies seem to be much more peaceful and

law abiding when they have a strong armed dictator or a heavy religious presence to enforced order. Now of course we have screwed up their system of self regulation by removing them.

And yet there are some who are surprised when they don't embrace our forced "democracy".

[Coventina]

4. The Taliban were (are) a foreign regime as well - from Pakistan

The Afghan people were not happy to be ruled by them either. They are a people very proud of their heritage, and were greatly angered by the destruction of their Buddhist monuments.


on edit: had to add "are" to my title as, unfortunately, the Taliban are alive and well...

[ben_meyers]

5. The point is that our brand of so-called "freedom and democracy"

fails in these societies. Wherever the Taliban is from, they had Afghanistan under control, much like Hussein did in Iraq.

[Coventina]

6. I understand your point.

Although I would argue that in the case of poor Afghanistan, it's hard to say what would or would not work for them as their "society" has been in an constant state of warfare since at least the Russian invasion.

I'll say this much though: I'm much more in favor of letting a home-grown bastard be (like Saddam in Iraq), than a regime of foreign bastards (like the Taliban in Afghanistan). Especially when those bastards use their ill-gotten power to commit criminal acts in other countries (like 9/11). I am perfectly comfortable with the U.S. being involved in the destruction of the Taliban. I don't approve of how the Bush administration went about it (totally wrong from start to finish), but I'll never be satisfied until every last one of them is captured and put on trial for the crimes they committed against us.

[customerserviceguy]

7. We screwed up

we let them enshrine Islamic law in their version of democracy. Democracy without religious freedom (and freedom from religion for those who desire it) is just theocracy by a mob.

[struggle4progress]

8. Afghanistan has been destroyed by decades of war: one should not forget

neither the Soviet invasion (which the US did everything possible to encourage, on a geopolitical theory that Afghanistan could become the USSR's Vietnam) nor the Reaganite response to the Soviet invasion, which was to fund and arm and train the radical religious extremists who we now find so difficult