Taliban released prisoners: Judges fear for their lives, now targets – Topky

Taliban militants, who came to power again after the United States withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, banned women from doing most jobs during their previous government 20 years ago. The movement has now declared that women’s rights will be protected, but details have not yet been given.

Women who have worked in the judiciary in the meantime have become desirable targets. Two judges of the Afghan Supreme Court were shot dead in January this year. Now the Taliban have released free nationwide prisoners who “really threaten the lives of women judges”, Reuters quoted a high – ranking Afghan judge who managed to escape to an unspecified European country.

In Cable “Four or five members of the Taliban came and asked the people in my house, ‘Where is this judge?’ These were the people I sat behind bars.”, the Afghan judge told Reuters in an interview in which she did not want to be named. She was in a small group of Afghan women who managed to escape from Afghanistan in recent weeks with the help of human rights activists and foreign colleagues from the International Association of Women Women (IAWJ). Since then, he has also been in contact with colleagues who have stayed at home: “Their messages are full of fear and complete terror. They tell me that if they do not save them, their lives are in immediate danger.”

In addition to the judges, there are about a thousand other human rights defenders in Afghanistan who may also be targeted by the Taliban, warned Afghan human rights activist Horia Mosadiq. Free prisoners “they call on the deaths of judges, prosecutors and police officers and say: ‘We will come for you'”, she added. British Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said last week that London had evacuated nine Afghan women judge and was working to provide a safe exit for more “very vulnerable people”.

Human rights and legal activists claim that Western countries have not made the evacuation of judges and human rights defenders a priority in the chaos following the fall of the Afghan capital Kabul into the hands of the Taliban, Reuters recalls. “Governments had zero interest in evacuating people who were not their citizens,” said Sarah Kay, a human rights lawyer based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.