The Taliban orders the execution by stoning of an Afgan couple who had tried to elope—and hundreds of local villagers, and even relatives, join in.

The Times reports:

As a Taliban mullah prepared to read the judgment of a religious “court,” Mr. Khan said the lovers, a 25-year-old man named Khayyam and a 19-year-old woman named Siddiqa, defiantly confessed in public to their relationship.

“They said, ‘We love each other no matter what happens,’ ” Mr. Khan said.

Heroes…and villains.

The details are hard to get your head around. The woman didn’t want to marry the person chosen for her; the young couple fled.

…family members persuaded them to return to their village, promising to allow them to marry. (Afghan men are legally allowed to marry up to four wives). Once back in Kunduz, however, they were arrested by the Taliban, who convened local mullahs from surrounding villages for a religious court.

… some 200 villagers participated in the executions, including Khayyam’s father and brother, and Siddiqa’s brother, as well as other relatives, with a larger crowd of onlookers who did not take part.

“People were very happy seeing this,” Mr. Khan maintained, saying the crowd was festive and cheering during the stoning. “They did a bad thing.”…

I don’t know which is more horrifying: The idea that a father would voluntarily throw stones at his daughter with the intention of killing her, or the possibility that he was so afraid of the Taliban that he threw stones at his daughter with the intention of killing her.