An article revisits the 1999 public execution of Zarmina, a mother-of-seven, in Kabul's Olympic Stadium, footage of which was secretly filmed and smuggled out of Afghanistan by women's rights activists to expose Taliban brutality. She was shot dead in front of a crowd of 30,000 after being convicted of murdering her abusive police officer husband, following months of beatings inflicted on her and her daughters. The case became one of the defining images of Taliban rule in the 1990s, and experts now warn that similar abuses against women may be recurring since the Taliban retook power in 2021, though tighter censorship means such punishments are less visible to the outside world.

Zarmina married Alauddin Khwazak at 16; he became increasingly violent and controlling, reportedly influenced by a hardline brother, and subjected her and her teenage daughters, Najeba and Shaista, to sustained physical abuse. She was accused of poisoning him, held and tortured for years before her execution, then paraded through the stadium in a pick-up truck before being shot by a man believed to be her brother-in-law. The article situates her death within the wider collapse of women's rights after the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, citing punishments such as amputations for nail varnish, lashings for high heels, and stoning, alongside the banning of girls' education.