Girl flogged as Taliban hand out justice

A video showing a teenage girl being flogged by Taliban fighters has emerged from the Swat Valley, offering a shocking glimpse of militant brutality in the once-peaceful district.
The two-minute video, shot using a mobile phone, shows a burqa-clad woman face down on the ground. Two men hold her arms and feet while a third, a black-turbaned fighter with a flowing beard, whips her repeatedly, reports timesonline.co.uk.
“Please stop it,” she begs, alternately whimpering or screaming in pain with each blow to the backside. “Either kill me or stop it now.”
A crowd of men stands by, watching silently. Off camera a voice issues instructions. “Hold her legs tightly,” he says as she squirms and yelps. After 34 lashes the punishment stops and the wailing woman is led into a stone building, trailed by a Kalashnikov-carrying militant.
Reached by phone, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan claimed responsibility for the flogging. “She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross,” he said. He defended the Taliban’s right to thrash women shoppers who were inappropriately dressed, saying it was permitted under Islamic law.
The website received the video through Samar Minallah, a Pashtun documentary-maker and anthropologist who lived in Swat for two years in the late 1990s. It has been passed between Swat residents by mobile phones.
Source: The Nation
Date:4/3/2009