Wazir Ahmad Seddiqi, who operates a local pharmacy, told the AP that four bodies were delivered to the square and three bodies were taken to other areas of the city for public appearance.
According to Seddiqi, the Taliban said the men were kidnappers and were killed by police.
A Taliban-selected police chief in the city later asserted that kidnappers had taken a father and son, adding the couple was rescued after a gunfight that killed all four claimed kidnappers, the AP reported.
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The Taliban quickly took over Afghanistan in mid-August and have since set out to gain international legitimacy, despite worries that the militant group would return to its former violence.
Under previous Taliban rule, the Taliban shot criminals dead and cut off hands and feet from alleged criminals and highway robbers.
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Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, one of the Taliban’s originators, told the AP earlier this week that the group has said executions and amputations will return as penalties for crimes.
“Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments,” Mullah Nooruddin Turabi said in the AP interview. “No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran.”
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Spokesman Ned Price told reporters Friday at his briefing that the United States would “stand firm with the international community to hold perpetrators of these — of any such abuses — accountable.”
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The Taliban’s leaders remain entrenched in a deeply conservative, hard-line worldview, even if they are embracing technological changes, such as video and mobile phones.
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Also Saturday, a roadside explosive beat a Taliban car in the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, wounding at least one person, a Taliban official said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Asked about Turabi’s remarks on Friday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the U.S. sentenced them “in the strongest terms.”
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“The acts the Taliban are talking about here would constitute clear gross abuses of human rights, and we stand firm with the international community to hold perpetrators of these — of any such abuses accountable,” Price told reporters.
“The aim of this action is to alert all criminals that they are not safe,” a Taliban commander who did not identify himself told the AP in an on-camera interview conducted in the square.
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