Woman arrested after accusing Taliban official of rape

She said she tried to escape to neighbouring Pakistan, but the Taliban arrested her at the border crossing and brought her back to Kabul and confined her to an apartment there.

The Taliban announced they have arrested and will soon sentence an Afghan woman who appeared in a video on social media earlier this week and said a senior Taliban official forced her into marriage and raped her repeatedly.

In the video, the woman, who identified herself only by her first name Elaha, wept as she described being beaten and raped by former Taliban Interior Ministry spokesman Saeed Khosti.

She said she was speaking from an apartment in Kabul where the Taliban had confined her after she tried to escape the country, and she pleaded for rescue.

"These may be my last words. He will kill me, but it is better to die once than to die every time,” she said.

Late Wednesday, a day after the video surfaced, the Taliban-run Supreme Court said in a tweet that Elaha had been arrested for defamation on orders of the chief justice Abdul Hakeem Haqqani.

Without mentioning any trial taking place, it said she would “soon be sentenced according to Sharia law.” “No one is allowed to harm the name of Mujahideen or defame the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the 20-years of holy jihad,” it said, referring to the Taliban and their war against U.S.-led troops and the U.S.-allied government, which the hardline insurgents toppled just over a year ago.

Since the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021, Afghan women activists, as well as Amnesty International, have reported an increase in forced marriages of women — including cases where Taliban officials coerced women into marriage by intimidating them or their families.