The UK Guardian has obtained video evidence of a female Afghan human rights activist being gang-raped and tortured in a Taliban prison by armed men.
There have been mounting reports of sexual violence being inflicted on women and girls in Afghanistan since the Taliban re-took the country in 2021.
According to the activist, the mobile phone footage was later sent to her as a threat that it would be shared more widely if she continued to speak out against the Taliban regime.
In the video recording viewed by the Guardian and Rukhshana Media, the young woman is filmed being told to take off her clothes and is then raped multiple times by two men.
The woman in the video, recorded on a phone by one of the armed men tries to cover her face with her hands. One of the men pushes her hard when she hesitates as he gives her orders.
At one point she is told, “You’ve been fucked by Americans all these years and now it’s our turn.”
The woman has said that she was arrested for taking part in a public protest against the Taliban and was raped while being held in detention in a Taliban prison. She has since fled Afghanistan.
According to the human rights activist, she was sent the video after she spoke out against the Taliban in exile. She also added that they told her that if she continued to criticise the regime the video would be sent to her family and released on social media.
“If you continue saying anything bad against the Islamic Emirate, we will publish your video,” she said she was told.
She believes that the attack was deliberately recorded to be used to silence and shame her. The person filming the assault captures her standing naked with her face visible and she is identifiable during the attacks.
Last week the Guardian published accounts of teenage girls and young women who said that they were sexually assaulted and beaten after being detained under Afghanistan’s draconian hijab laws.
In one case, a woman’s body was allegedly found in a canal a few weeks after she had been taken into custody by Taliban militants, with a source close to her family saying she had been sexually abused before her death.
