Daily Mail: Taliban ‘too lenient’

The Daily Mail has once again asserted itself as the world’s moral bulldog by declaring the Taliban regime ‘too lenient’.

After a delegation was invited to a Taliban-controlled area of Helmand province, so they could attend the public amputation of a man’s hand, the journalists declared they were both ‘outraged’ and ‘appalled.’

Columnist Melanie Philips writes in today’s edition, ‘Frankly I was disgusted by this repellent travesty of justice. Here was a convicted thief getting off almost Scot-free with only his right hand being cut off. If this is what passes for a deterrent from stealing an Alice band and some other tat these days, it’s no wonder Claire’s Accessories is running at a loss in Helmand. It’s penal lenience gone mad.’

Summarising her argument against amputation as a form of punishment, Philips continues, ‘Say a man steals an apple, you cut off his hand. Then he steals another apple; you cut off his other hand. Next time the man robs a bank, he hasn’t got any hands left to cut off: All you can do is give him a slap on the bloody wrist and send him on his merry way. Moreover, if you’d hung him in the first place at a cost of just £14.99, you could have saved the £49.98 you spent on the hand amputations. It’s just a needless, tragic, barbaric waste of taxpayers’ money.’

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