Mahjabin Hakimi: Taliban beheaded volleyball player, posted photos of severed neck
Trigger warning: Gruesome content
An Afghan volleyball player on the girls' national team was beheaded by the Taliban in Afghanistan's capital of Kabul. The military organization then posted photos of her severed head on social media, according to the girl's coach. The girl who was identified as Mahjabin Hakimi was amongst the best players in the Kabul Municipality Volleyball Club. She was slaughtered when troops searched for female sports players, her coach told the Persian Independent.
Hakimi was murdered earlier in October but news of her death remained mostly hidden as her family members had been threatened into silence. Her coach who is identified by the pseudonym Suraya Afzali said the family worried for their safety and chose to not speak on the matter. Photos of Hakimi's severed neck were published on Afghan social media, according to the paper. There's no information on Hakimi's age as of yet. In August, certain female members aged 16 to 18 on Afghanistan's robotics team fled the country and flew into America. They are at an undisclosed location from where they will continue their education. A Harvard graduate named Allyson Reneau came under fire for falsely claiming she was responsible for the girls' making it alive out of the war-torn nation and making it to America.
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'All the players of the volleyball team are in despair and fear'
Speaking to the newspaper, Afzali said she decided to come forward to highlight the risk that female sports players in the nation are facing. She said only two of the women's national volleyball team have managed to flee the country. “All the players of the volleyball team and the rest of the women athletes are in a bad situation and in despair and fear,” Afzali told the paper. “Everyone has been forced to flee and live in unknown places," she said. One of the volleyball players named Zahra Fayazi who managed to escape told BBC in September that at least one of the players had been killed.
“We don’t want this to repeat for our other players,” she told BBC from her new home in the United Kingdom. She added many players in the team were threatened by their relatives who belonged to the Taliban or were followers of the organization. “The Taliban asked our players’ families to not allow their girls to do sport, otherwise they will be faced with unexpected violence,” Fayazi said. “They even burned their sports equipment to save themselves and their families. They didn’t want them to keep anything related to sport. They are scared,” she said, narrating the horror she and her teammates witnessed.