Anti Islam Taliban flog young 17 years old girl in Swat

A video showing a teenage girl being flogged by anti Islam 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.

“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.

“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,” the Guardian quoted Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan as saying.

The girl’s brother is among the men who pinned her down, she added. “It’s symbolic that he does it with his own hands. It gives him honour in local society, that he has done it for the sake of religion.”

Reached by phone, anti Islam 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.

Pakistani Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry taking a suo motu notice of footage of whipping of a 17 year old girl, ordered the Interior Secretary to bring the girl along with him to the court.

According to a press release issued by the SC, the CJP ordered for the matter to be taken by the larger bench under Article 184 of the Constitution.