GRIM AFGHAN DRAMA

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 880, 25 January 1930, Page 30

GRIM AFGHAN DRAMA

USURPING AMIR HANGED AND SHOT CORPSES LEFT TO CARRION Grim mediaeval torture was meted out to the bandit Baeho-Sachao, the usurping Afghan Amir, who was executed with his staff at Kabul recently. Bacha seized the throhe at the beginning of this year, styling himself the Amir Habibullah, following Amanullah’s forced abdication on account of his efforts at Westernisation and Inayatullah’s three-days reign. Last month, after a protracted war in the mountains, lie was vanquished by Nadir Khan, the one-time Afghan Minister of War. His capture, trial and death—on account of his own shocking cruelties—were a speedy sequel. An excited motor-lorry driver rushed into Peshawar with the news that he possessed the first photographs of Bacha-Sachao’s trial and execution, writes a “Daily Mail” correspondent. It can now be revealed that the fate accorded at Kabul Aerodrome to Bacha and his staff was hanging until they were nearly dead and then shooting by a Waziri firing party. It will be recalled that they were captured shortly after Nadir Khan ascended the throne. At a charge of 3d a person all and sundry were permitted to view today the tolerably distinct snapshots of the last scene in the Afghan drama. It appears that Bacha and his Ministers were dragged by their hair from the citadel after the trial. On the slightest sign of hesitancy sharpened bayonets were used as spurs and the unhappy group was pelted with stones and garbage by the crowds in the main streets. At the airdrome, which had seen many other executions in the previous few months, gibbets has been erected in a line. Bacha was marched to the first, his arms tightly tied behind liis hack and his ankles heavily shackled, but with sufficient play left to allow of slow walking. He was followed by the rest of his staff! Each of the six men was hanged, at intervals of five minutes, Bacha being the last. The ropes on the gibbets, too, were so adjusted that death would not relieve the warriors from their sufferings for several minutes. The execution of the first man hanged was completed by the attendant firing-party just before he would have died from hanging, and each one after him was subjected to the same routine. Bacha had to watch the fate of all five of his confederates. Finally it was the ex-Amir’s own turn. The bandit was certainly a cruel and relentless ruler, but the bravery of bis end was exemplary. He awaited his fate with a smile, and as he was hanged he scoffed at the Waziris. He was suspended in mid-air by his neck for nearly five minutes before the shots rang out to toll bis deathknell. Then his body was cut down and photographed—and in the postmortem snapshot his derisive smile is clearly discernible. The bodies of the six were left unburied on the airdrome for the eagles and hawks to remove the evidence. It was the most terrible execution ever carried out even in wild Afghanistan.