Taliban denies allegations it is executing former Afghan security personnel

Afghanistan’s Taliban government rejects condemnation by Western nations over dozens of alleged “summary killings” of former security force personnel documented by rights groups since the Islamists returned to power.

The US, other Western nations and allies said yesterday that they were “deeply concerned” by allegations by Human Rights Watch and others that point to “serious human rights abuses.”

Alleged summary killings and enforced disappearances “contradict” an amnesty declared by the Taliban for former security force personnel after the Islamists defeated a Western-backed regime and retook control of the country in mid-August, the State Department said in a statement also signed by the European Union, Australia, Britain, Japan and others.

But the Taliban’s Interior Ministry rejects both the Western rebuke and rights groups’ allegations.

“These reports and claims are not based on evidences,” spokesman Qari Sayed Khosti says in a video statement released by the Taliban. “We reject such claims.”

Many ex-regime security personnel “who had martyred hundreds of mujahideen and civilians are living peacefully” in the country on the basis of the general amnesty the Taliban granted, he adds.