From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon Feb 11 2002 - 23:59:36 MST
On 11 Feb 2002 at 2:38, L' Ermit wrote:
I sincerely hope that this does not stand.
> [url]http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/01/30/international1359EST0632.DTL[/url]
>
> In new Afghanistan, scales of justice still tip toward strict Islamic law
>
> LAURA KING, AP Special Correspondent Wednesday, January 30, 2002
> Breaking News Sections
>
> (01-30) 22:49 PST KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) --
>
> Afghanistan's new chief justice wears a pure-white turban, and hanging on
> the wall above his desk are two symbols of Islamic justice: a sword and a
> leather lash for flogging.
>
> The Taliban are gone, but sharia, or the code of Islamic law, is here to
> stay, says Fazel Hadi Shinwari, appointed by the interim government one
> month ago as chief of Afghanistan's Supreme Court.
>
> That means that in the new Afghanistan, adulterers can still face death by
> stoning, homosexuals can be punished by being hurled from a high place or
> having a wall toppled over onto them, and thieves can be sentenced to having
> a hand lopped off, the 70-year-old justice said Wednesday in an interview
> with The Associated Press.
>
> But such punishments, Shinwarai said, would only be meted out following a
> meticulous legal process, during which the accused has many chances to
> contest the charges and appeal for clemency, and measures such as paying
> restitution can often stave off the harshest sentences.
>
> "We will not be like the Taliban," he said. "They used to hold one quick
> hearing, with no lawyers or witnesses, take the person away to the stadium
> and carry out the sentence in front of everyone -- that was wrong. They
> blackened the name of Islam."
>
> Few in Kabul can forget the chilling Taliban practice of public executions
> and amputations, many of which were carried out in the city's dilapidated
> sports stadium before large crowds. If there were not enough onlookers,
> Taliban police would sometimes take to the nearby streets and round up more.
>
> On several occasions, amputated hands and feet were strung from lampposts
> around Kabul as a warning.
>
> To some who suffered summary Taliban justice, it is time for a more merciful
> era.
>
> "A sheep being brought to the slaughter had more dignity than I did," said
> 33-year-old Mirwais, whose hand and foot were amputated by the Taliban at
> the stadium in 1997 after he was convicted of highway robbery.
>
> He said he had no lawyer and was uncertain of the charges against him until
> he was told he had been found guilty. The next day, he said, he was brought
> to the stadium and made to kneel on the dead grass.
>
> Mirwais, who like many Afghans uses one name, remembers the sight of the
> doctor's masked face and the prick of a needle for the anesthetic before he
> awoke in the hospital with searing pain in the stumps of his limbs.
>
> "My life is over now -- I have nothing left," said Mirwais, who has no job,
> and lives in a freezing mud-brick hovel. "No one should have this kind of
> punishment."
>
> Shinwari said that unlike in Taliban times, doctors would not be made to
> carry out amputations; prison doctors who were willing would do the job.
> Punishments would no longer take place in public, he said, but behind prison
> walls.
>
> "It is barbaric for the carrying out of a judicial sentence to be a public
> entertainment," Shinwari said sternly.
>
> He said his court would stand ready, if necessary, to try Osama bin Laden or
> Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, if they were captured and it was
> decided to bring them to justice in Afghanistan.
>
> Asked how they would be treated, he said they would be tried with all due
> process, and that depending on the charges they could face life in prison or
> the death penalty.
>
> Shinwari is a native of eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province, a member
> of a prominent Pashtun tribe. The Taliban, whose top leadership was almost
> all Pashtun, used strict tribal codes of behavior as the basis for some of
> their many rules and regulations.
>
> But the Taliban brand of justice became increasingly bizarre, outlawing
> activities like pigeon-keeping and kite-flying, mandating the length of
> men's beards and forbidding women to wear white stockings because that was
> the color of the Taliban flag. Edicts were enforced by much-feared religious
> police. Shinwari said no one wanted to see a return to such times, but that
> Afghanistan's social values had to be taken into account in administering
> the country's judicial system.
>
> "Afghanistan is still an Islamic state," he said. "The Taliban distorted
> sharia, but it has its place in our society."
>
> Shinwari has lived in exile for nearly 40 years, most of that time spent in
> Pakistan, where he taught Islamic law at a madrassa, or religious seminary.
> He said he traveled to Kabul to witness the swearing-in of interim leader
> Hamid Karzai, a fellow Pashtun, and was surprised to find himself appointed
> chief justice.
>
> The high court has yet to sit in session, because it hears appeals from
> lower courts that have only begun trying cases within the last several
> weeks. So it will probably take a month or two to build up a caseload for
> the high court, Shinwari said.
>
>
>
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