Twelve years after the Taliban was ousted from power Afghanistan is planning to reintroduce public stoning as punishment for adultery, according to a new draft penal code.The move has shocked human rights campaigners and will dismay donors who have poured billions of pounds into the country for reconstruction. It will be viewed as another backwards step at the end of a year that has seen women's rights undermined, with a slew of legislation and murders of prominent women.
Human Rights Watch called for international donors to withhold funding if the government went ahead with the plan. Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: "It is absolutely shocking that 12 years after the fall of the Taliban government, the (President Hamid) Karzai administration might bring back stoning as a punishment.
"President Karzai needs to demonstrate at least a basic commitment to human rights and reject this proposal out of hand."
The draft -- devised by a working group led by the Justice Ministry and parts of which have been obtained by The Telegraph -- states that unmarried adulterers should be subject to 100 lashes. If they are married, the punishment is stoning in a public place.
Stoning was used as punishment for adultery during Taliban rule, a brutal period which included bans on radio, television and music.