Child beheader video 'shocking'

2007-04-24 19:56

Kabul - Afghanistan's leading human rights group condemned a video as "shocking" on Tuesday that reportedly shows a young boy hacking off the head of a man accused of being a US spy.

Censored excerpts of the video, apparently made in Pakistan, are on the internet and Afghan television stations showed certain portions late on Monday.

The boy, who looks to be barely into his teens, slits the throat of an older bearded man as masked onlookers shout "God is great".

"It is shocking," said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

"It is of high concern and we condemn this sort of activity by Taliban and those who are intentionally abusing children and forcing them into this kind of brutal and violent behaviour," said the commissioner.

The United Nation's children's organisation Unicef said the use of a child in such an act was a war crime.

"The act was a terrible example of how children can be used by adults to commit heinous crimes in times of conflict," it said on Monday.

The Taliban are waging a vicious campaign in which they have beheaded several people accused of spying for the foreign forces who arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban government for sheltering al-Qaeda.

'Very prolonged war'

During the extremists' five-year hold on power they carried out several public executions, such as stoning for adultery.

In one case they had a woman slit the throat of a man in revenge for a murder, said Hakim.

The apparently unprecedented use of a child was an attempt to spread the Taliban's culture of violence and create a new generation of fighters, he said.

It also seemed intended to galvanise support for a "very prolonged war" and to entrench fear among people, the commissioner said.

Unicef said it was "not uncommon to see children forced to commit atrocities, even against their own families".

"These acts cut off all ties between these children and their original communities and strengthens their dependency on the armed group that has recruited them," it said.

- AFP