1996: Dr. Mohammad Najibullah
4 comments September 27th, 2009 Headsman
On this date in 1996, the man who once ruled ruled Afghanistan under the aegis of a superpower succumbed to the tender mercies of his country’s fundamentalist insurgency.
Mohammad Najibullah was the last president of the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Unfortunately for Najibullah, he was on the job when Moscow decided to throw in the towel on the Soviet-Afghan War.
After losing the subsequent civil war, the former President was trapped for a nervous few years in Kabul — blocked from joining his family in flight to India by the offices of former Soviet client and present-day American client Abdul Rashid Dostum.
When Kabul finally surrendered to the Taliban in 1996, the hated onetime Communist viceroy — whose stepping-stone to that post was heading the hated Afghan secret police — had a problem.
At the instigation of future Taliban second-in-command Mohammad Rabbani, Najibullah and his brother were hauled out of the U.N. compound where they had taken refuge, publicly beaten, tortured and castrated, and strung up on a traffic barricade.
There was a new sheriff in town.
Also On This Date
Possibly Related Executions
- 1979: Hafizullah Amin
- 1871: The Paris Commune falls
- 1942: The village of Lidice, for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
Entry Filed under: 20th Century, Afghanistan, Borderline "Executions", Capital Punishment, Cycle of Violence, Death Penalty, Doctors, Execution, Hanged, Heads of State, History, Lynching, Mature Content, No Formal Charge, Occupation and Colonialism, Politicians, Power, Public Executions, Summary Executions, The Worm Turns, Torture, Wartime Executions
Tags: 1990s, 1996, abdul rashid dostum, afghan civil war, afghan-soviet war, anti-communism, civil war, communism, communists, islam, kabul, khad, mohammad najibullah, mohammad rabbani, september 27, soviet-afghan war, taliban
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