 Image of woman, seated, wearing hood, about to be stoned in smuggled cell-phone video |
A graphic new video, captured on cell phone and released through an Arabic TV station, has been translated and brought to English-speaking audiences, demonstrating for the first time the brutality of public stonings in the Taliban-controlled areas of Pakistan.
News footage of the video was first broadcast by the United Arab Emirates–owned Alaan TV then translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, which claims to monitor more than 100 Arabic and Farsi TV channels.
“This footage is unique, because Taliban-Pakistan tries to conceal such images,” reports the Alaan TV anchor. “They know that images of the stoning of a woman should not be made public, because they might cause a rift between the movement and its supporters. As far as we know, this is the first time anyone has obtained footage of a woman being stoned by Taliban-Pakistan.”
According to the report, the woman was stoned for the crime of “being seen with a man.”
The MEMRI-translated video can be seen below:
Editor’s note, the following video contains graphic images of violence and bloodshed. Following the stoning, a second, separate incident of violence is also reported, of an execution conducted for unspecified causes.
According to Alaan TV, the video was filmed by a member of the Taliban-Pakistan with his cell phone in the Orakzai region of Pakistan, a mountains area in the northwest, bordering Afghanistan. The video was then smuggled out and obtained by Alaan TV.
Though the video shot through a cell-phone lens is of poor quality, the hooded woman can be clearly seen at the beginning, seated in a rocky area at the feet of a crowd of men. Shortly thereafter, the men begin to pick up rocks.
“The stoning begins,” the video’s narrator states. “After the woman is struck by one stone, two stones and many more, her body begins to shudder. The men continue to pelt stones at her, and, soon, her body becomes motionless.”
WND reported a true-life account of an Islamic stoning written in the 1995 book “The Stoning of Soraya M.” and the subsequent film of the same title.
Photos and video of actual Islamic stonings, however, have been rarely seen in the West.
