The Taliban staged so many public executions during...

The Taliban staged so many public executions during their five years in power that Supreme Court Judge Zalmai Payeda lost count.
"I can't say how many executions there were, but in this [Kabul] stadium every 15 days, or every month, or every two months someone was executed or their hands or feet were amputated.
"During an execution, a person had his hands and feet tied, and then someone would take a knife and slit his throat in the stadium and that person would bleed to death. Or someone would shoot a person with bullets from an assault rifle in the back."
Men and boys were brought into the stadium to watch and learn a lesson. But most males avoided the stadium whenever such punishment was meted out, he said.
The white-bearded Mr Payeda, 55, said he was a Supreme Court judge for 24 years. After the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, however, they kicked him off the bench.
At the end of November the new US-backed, anti-Taliban "interim" government said Mr Payeda could return to the Supreme Court as a judge, along with all other judges, court officials and secretaries.
The Taliban had set up their own judicial system presided over by loyal mullahs, or traditional prayer leaders from local Muslim mosques, instead of judges.
The Taliban's first public execution in Kabul occurred in December 1996, shortly after they came to power. About 3,000 men, mostly Taliban fighters, watched the morbid spectacle.
The condemned man had been convicted of strangling to death a pregnant woman and her three small children. Her grieving husband was allowed to kill him with a Kalashnikov assault rifle in the stadium.
The Taliban also inflicted other ancient punishments, such as publicly stoning people to death, toppling a wall on to them or whipping them.