PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Several fundamentalist Afghan guerrilla leaders were hanged at a public gathering inside Afghanistan for murdering about 30 moderate mujahideen guerrillas last summer, a spokesman for the Jamiat-i-Islami guerilla group said Sunday.
Fundamentalist Hezb-i-Islami commander Syed Jamal Agha was hanged with several other Hezb commanders in Taloqan on Dec. 23, Jamiat spokesman Umar Sherdil said, confirming reports published Sunday in local newspapers.
Sherdil told journalists that Syed Jamal Agha and a 'few' other Hezb-i-Islami commanders were publicly hanged in Taloqan City's main park in the presence of 43 leading ulema or elders hailing from northern Afghanistan. He said a large number of people witnessed the execution.
The executions are the latest in a series of assassinations among mujahideen guerrillas and politicians in Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan as Moslem fundamentalists struggle for power with moderates over the 5 million refugees and the rebel movement.
A Jamiat member claiming to have witnessed the execution said Syed Jamal Agha was questioned in the Taloqan park and accused by many people of killing their relatives and friends.
The commander reportedly told them that he had killed hundreds of people in the fighting against Soviet and Soviet-backed Afghan forces and couldn't indentify them.
He was also reported to have confessed his role in the murders of about 30 Jamiat commanders and mujahideen in an ambush near Farkhar in Takhar province this summer.
Hizb-i-Islami is a hardline fundamentalist Afghan guerilla group seeking to create an Islamic state in Kabul. Because it was favored by late Pakistani President Zia ul Haq, Hizb received the lion's share of U.S. and Saudi cash and weapons to fight the Soviet-backed Kabul regime.
Jamiat, while also strongly Islamic, is more moderate. Hizb has been particularly envious of the charismatic and succesful Jamiat commander Ahmad Shah Masood, who was reportedly the object of the Hizb massacre of Jamiat commanders last summer.
A Jamiat source source who requested anonymity, said Masood had resisted public demands for executing Syed Jamal Agha and his supporters ever since their capture a few months ago. He reportedly wanted the nine-member commission constituted by the Afghan Interim Government to probe the Takhar incident and to give its verdict as to whether they were to be executed or imprisoned.
Jamiat sources claimed Masood finaly decided on the execution when relatives of those killed by Agha, and other people, threatened either to announce support for the Kabul regime or to flush-out the mujahideen from Taloqan.
Hezb-i-Islami sources, while more or less confirming the excutions, said they couldn't comment on it in their official capacity and said they didn't know any of the details of the executions as reported by Jamiat members.