10 January 2008 :

once the shooting began, it took more than five minutes to kill the last of the 15 condemned men. Stumbling blindly into one another in the darkness, hooded, shackled and handcuffed, some had somehow survived the automatic fire from a ten-man firing squad at almost point-blank range. However, when the final coup de grace had been applied and the night was silent again, it was clear that one man was missing. Timur Shah, perhaps Afghanistan’s most infamous criminal, sentenced to die for kidnap, rape and murder, had escaped in the mêlée that was the country’s first official execution for three years. “It was a grotesque mockery of justice,” Sam Zia-Zarifi, Human Rights Watch research director for Asia, said. “It was cruel and inhuman. The legal systems in even the wealthiest nations are incapable of providing justice when it comes to capital punishment. Afghanistan certainly can’t.” The slaughter occurred at 9.30pm on October 7 on the eastern outskirts of Kabul. Timur Shah escaped with the complicity of corrupt guards. A 16th man remained alive, hidden among prisoners in the notorious Policharki jail in the capital. The bodies of the slain were so badly mutilated that in some cases identification was impossible. The Afghan Attorney-General is investigating claims that some paid for their execution places to be taken by low-level prisoners.