GHAZNI: Taliban militants publicly hanged a university student after accusing him of killing a senior intelligence officer, Afghan officials said on Saturday.

The militants took Faizul Rehman, a fourth-year student at Kabul Polytechnic university, from his car as he was travelling home to visit his family in the Chak district of Maidan Wardak province, around 60 kilometres west of Kabul.

“They hanged him on Friday in front of (the) public. Local elders tried to mediate to release him, but they failed,” Abdul Rehman Mangal, a spokesman for the governor of Maidan Wardak, said.

“They accused him of killing Mullah Mirwais the head of their intelligence in the area,” he said.

The Afghan interior ministry confirmed the execution and said they had launched an investigation “to arrest and punish the perpetrators of this criminal act”.

Published in Dawn December 4th, 2016