http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=8273175



FAIZABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - An Afghan woman has been stoned to death for adultery, police said on Sunday, the first such incident in Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster from power.

Amina, a 29 year-old married woman, was publicly stoned to death on the basis of a district court's decision on Thursday in Argo district to the west of Faizabad, the provincial capital of Badakhshan, they said.

"She has been stoned to death," provincial police chief, General Shah Jahan Noori, confirmed to Reuters, adding a team has been sent to the area to investigate the incident further.

Adultery is forbidden in the Muslim country and under Islamic sharia law the penalty can range from flogging to stoning to death.

Several women and men were given such punishments in Badakhshan, a remote northeastern province, during the government of the Mujahideen (holy warriors) in the 1990s.

The practice became common during the rule of hardline Taliban who controlled most of Afghanistan till late 2001 when they were ousted from power by U.S.-led forces.

A witness, Mujibur Rahman, told Reuters that Amina was dragged out of her parent's house by local officials and her husband who stoned her to death while the man was flogged, whipped 100 times and then freed.

Amina's stoning was the first one in Afghanistan since President Hamid Karzai was installed to power after the U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban's government, Noori said.

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

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Talk about medieval way of life, just doesn't make much sense to me.