Afghan woman accuses senior Taliban official of rape

Warning that these may be her last words, an Afghan woman accused a senior Taliban official of forcing her into marriage and repeatedly raping her in a video that surfaced on social media in recent days.

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 spokesperson Saeed Khosti, AP reports.

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 in the video, which surfaced on Tuesday.

Elaha’s situation since making the video public is not certain. Late Wednesday, the Twitter page of the Kabul branch of the Supreme Court said Elaha had been formally arrested and would soon be sentenced for defamation.

However, a new Twitter page for the Supreme Court established last month said in a post Thursday that the other was fake, referring to its posting of the arrest. The discrepancy could not immediately be resolved. Officials from the Supreme Court and the Interior Ministry did not reply to requests for comment on whether Elaha had been formally arrested or not.

Since seizing power, the Taliban have imposed increasing restrictions on women. They have prevented many women from working, barred teenage girls from school and required women in public to cover themselves completely except for their eyes. The world has refused to recognize the Taliban’s rule, demanding it respect human rights and show tolerance for other groups.