Afghan folk singer executed by Taliban following music prohibition, says family: report

Afghan folk singer Fawad Andarabi was executed by the Taliban, days after the militants searched his home and drank tea with him, his family said.

"He was innocent, a singer who only was entertaining people," Andarabi's son, Jawad, told the Associated Press. "They shot him in the head on the farm."

Andarabi played a bowed lute called the ghichak and sang traditional songs about the country and his people.

The family's farm is in the Andarabi Valley, where the family got their name, which is 60 miles north of Kabul, near the mountainous Panjshir province, the only one not under control of the Taliban.

Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban, told the AP that they would look into the shooting.

Mujahid told the New York Times days earlier that the Taliban was banning music, which it did before when the terrorist group ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

The former interior minister of Afghanistan, Masoud Andarabi, who is not related to the singer's family, tweeted a video of Andarabi on Saturday, writing: "Taliban's brutality continues in Andarab. Today they brutally killed folkloric singer, Fawad Andarabi who simply was brining joy to this valley and its people. As he sang here 'our beautiful valley….land of our forefathers…' will not submit to Taliban’s brutality."

The United Nations special rapporteur on cultural rights, Karima Bennoune, also tweeted, "I express grave concern abt reports of the terrible killing of singer #FawadAndarabi.

"We call on governments to demand the Taliban respect the #humanrights of #artists."