The Taliban has arrested an Afghan woman who accused a senior official of rape.
The woman, who was identified only by her first name Elaha, released a video earlier this week in which she alleged being forced into marriage, beaten and repeatedly raped by former Taliban Interior Ministry spokesman Saeed Khosti.
She said she was speaking from an apartment in Kabul where the Taliban had confined her after she tried to escape the country, and pleaded for rescue.
"These may be my last words. He will kill me, but it is better to die once than to feel like I'm dying every day," she said.
Along side the video of her speaking were images of blood and bruises.
On Wednesday, a day after the video surfaced, the Taliban-run Supreme Court said in a tweet Elaha had been arrested for defamation on orders of the chief justice Abdul Hakeem Haqqanil, and would "soon be sentenced according to Sharia law".
"No one is allowed to harm the name of Mujahideen or defame the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the 20 years of holy jihad," it said, referring to the Taliban and their war against US-led troops and the US-allied government, which they toppled just over a year ago.
However, a new Twitter page for the Supreme Court established last month said in a post on Thursday that the other was fake, referring to its posting of the arrest.
The discrepancy could not immediately be resolved. Officials from the Supreme Court and the Interior Ministry did not reply to requests for comment whether Elaha had been formally arrested or not.
The original account was established within weeks of the Taliban takeover last year and the tweet was retweeted by some Taliban officials.
Since the Taliban took over the country in August 2021, Afghan women activists, as well as Amnesty International, have reported an increase in forced marriages of women — including cases where Taliban officials coerced women into marriage by intimidating them or their families.
In the video, Elaha identified herself as a medical student at Kabul University and the daughter of an intelligence service general under the former government.
She said Mr Khosti had forced her into marriage six months ago, when he was still a Taliban spokesman.
Mr Khosti tried to marry her sister to another Taliban official, but her family successfully fled, she said.
"Saeed Khosti beat me a lot. Every night he raped me," Elaha said, breaking into tears.
She said she tried to escape to neighbouring Pakistan, but the Taliban arrested her at the border crossing and brought her back to Kabul.
After they brought her back, she heard a Taliban member telling Mr Khosti that she had lived under the former government for 20 years and should be stoned to death as an infidel, she said.
In tweets on Wednesday, Mr Khosti confirmed that he had married Elaha, but he denied mistreating her.
"I assure you that I have not done anything illegal," he wrote.
In a statement on Elaha's case, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that "it would be no surprise for a Taliban official to feel free to inflict forced marriage, rape, assault," given multiple reports of such cases.
It also said the Taliban have "systematically dismantled structures to combat violence against women and girls", including shelters, legal assistance programs and prosecution units and courts specialised in enforcing laws against violence against women.
In recent months, Mr Khosti was transferred out of his spokesman post and it is not clear what his new role is.
He said he divorced Elaha after finding she "has a problem in her faith" and he accused her of insulting Islam's holy book, the Koran.
Elaha's video was shared on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp groups, sparking a wave of calls for help and denunciations of the Taliban from women activists.
Since seizing power, the Taliban have imposed increasing restrictions on women.
They have prevented many women from working, barred teenage girls from school and required women in public to cover themselves completely except for their eyes.
The world has refused to recognise the Taliban's rule, demanding it respect human rights and show tolerance for other groups.
ABC/AP
