Taliban authorities today publicly executed a man convicted of murder in a stadium in northern Afghanistan, days after they executed two other men, an official source said.

Nazar Muhammad, who was convicted of stabbing a man to death in January 2022, was executed in the city of Seberghan, Afghanistan’s Supreme Court announced.

The order for the execution was signed by the supreme leader of the country, Haibatullah Akhundzada, after the judiciary examined the case “very carefully and repeatedly”, the same source clarified.

The condemned man was executed with five bullets in front of his victim’s family and thousands of other people gathered at the stadium, a local official said.

According to an AFP tally, this is the fifth public execution to take place since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, but the third in a matter of days. On Thursday, two men were executed in the same manner in Ghazni province.

Also in June in Lagman province, a man convicted of murdering five people was executed with a single bullet in the mosque in front of about 2,000 people.

Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first period of rule, from 1996 to 2001. Those sentenced to death were usually executed by bullets or stoning, depending on the crimes they were convicted of.

After returning to power, the Taliban had said they would be more relaxed in the implementation of sharia, but in reality they are imposing their strict version of Islam on Afghanistan.

Amnesty International had denounced last week the use of the death penalty by the Taliban authorities, speaking of a “serious blow to human dignity”. “Public executions increase the inherent brutality of the death penalty,” the organization had estimated.

All recent executions have been carried out based on the Islamic principle of “kissah”, the law of revenge. Taliban authorities have also carried out many public floggings for other crimes such as theft, adultery or drinking alcohol.

In November 2022 Haibatullah Akhundzada had asked the judges to apply all the provisions of sharia, mainly regarding public executions in cases of conviction for murder, but also physical punishments (stoning, flogging and amputations).