80,000 spectators poured into a Wembley-sized stadium in Afghanistan to watch a 13-year-old boy carry out a public execution on orders from the Taliban.

18:59, Wed, Dec 3, 2025 Updated: 19:09, Wed, Dec 3, 2025

A crowd heads toward a stadium to attend the public execution, carried out by Taliban authorities

80k spectators poured into an Afghanistan stadium to watch a boy, 13, carry out a public execution (Image: AP)

The Taliban in Afghanistan have carried out another huge public execution in front of a stadium packed with tens of thousands of people, but on this occasion, they forced a 13-year-old boy to carry out the act on the man who allegedly killed over a dozen members of his family. The public execution was carried out at a stadium in the eastern city of Khost on Tuesday, December 2, killing a man who Afghanistan's Supreme Court claimed had killed 13 members of the boy's family, including several children.

Around 80,000 people, including relatives of the victims, attended the execution in the Wembley-sized stadium, which the Supreme Court said was the 11th carried out since the Taliban seized power following the withdrawal of US and NATO troops in 2021. According to the Supreme Court's statement, the act was ordered after a death sentence was passed down by a court, an appeals court and the top court itself, and approved by Afghanistan’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada.

They claimed the family of the victim was "offered the option of forgiveness and retaliation" but "refused" and "insisted on Qisas" - a term in Sharia law which roughly translates as "an eye for an eye".

A Taliban policeman looks on as a crowd heads toward a stadium to attend the public execution carried out by Taliban authorities of a man sentenced by

The man executed had shot to death 13 members of the boy's family, including nine children (Image: AP)

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The man was shot to death by a relative of those he was convicted of having killed, said Khost police spokesman Mustaghfir Gorbaz. He had been convicted alongside another man of entering a family home in the province and shooting to death an extended family, including nine children and their mother, Mr Gorbaz said.

Spectators were banned from filming the execution, but footage filmed from outside the stadium showed large crowds making their way to the building.

The execution was condemned by the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan Richard Bennet, who wrote on X: "Public executions are inhumane, a cruel and unusual punishment, and contrary to international law".

A Taliban policeman, center, and two other men walk past a poster stating that cameras, phones, and weapons are banned inside a stadium where a public

Spectators were banned from filming the execution, but footage filmed from outside the stadium showed large crowds making their way to the building (Image: AP)

Mr Bennett said in October that the use of the death penalty in Afghanistan was "especially alarming" because the Taliban-controlled justice system "lacks any semblance of independence or due process."

Since returning to power in 2021, Taliban authorities have imposed a strict interpretation of Sharia law, which has included a return of public executions, as well as bans on Afghan women and girls from secondary school and university education and from most forms of employment. Public executions were also common during the Taliban's first rule between 1996 and 2001.

On April 11, four men were publicly executed in three cities across the country, again in front of tens of thousands of spectators at sports stadiums. At the time, Amnesty International called on authorities to halt the executions, which it described as a "gross affront to human dignity".