Ahmadi suffered torture and gang rape when the Taliban imprisoned him (Picture: Getty)
Hamed Sabouri began to cry in a restaurant in Kabul, Afghanistan — his boyfriend of two years had placed chilli pepper in his soup.
Sabouri, 22, hated chilli peppers. Couldn’t stand them, recalls Ahmadi (not his real name).
Ahmadi, 29, says the dinner date in 2020 is a ‘memory of Hamed that will never be forgotten’.
He even remembers the kaftan he wore, how he was tired that day and how Sabouri was a ‘very kind boy’. The two dated from 2018 to 2022.
Taliban forces abducted Sabouri in August — nearly a year to the day since the militants retook control — dragged him to an unknown location and shot him.
‘I found out after 5:00am that Hamed was killed by the Taliban because before killing him, he called me and told me that I was under threat,’ Ahmadi says.
The Taliban’s arrival into Kabul shuddered fear for LGBTQ+ Afghans (Picture: AFP)
Ahmadi desperately tried to call him back, but Sabouri’s mobile had been switched off.
‘The Taliban sent me a video of his death,’ Ahmadi says of the four-second clip seen by seen by Metro.co.uk, adding: ‘Telling me that you will become Hamed.’
‘His memory will never be forgotten,’ Ahmadi says.
Sabouri, from Kabul, was a regular star-gazer. He hoped to be a doctor one day, loved romance novels and listened to Michael Jackson and Justin Bieber.
Gay man ‘gang raped by six men with a machine gun’ in prison by Taliban
A single year of Taliban rule has turned Ahmadi’s life upside down.
‘Before the Taliban came, my life was great, I was free,’ Ahmadi says. ‘I was not insulted anywhere, I had a love life everywhere. I had sex with boys.
‘Now I live like a prisoner. I am insulted and tortured everywhere.’
‘My elder brother was a [Afghan Uniform Police] officer, he was shot in front of my eyes by Taliban terrorists,’ he adds.
Thousands of people fled the country after the Taliban’s bloody recapturing of Kabul. But LGBTQ+ remain (Picture: Getty Images/AFP)
Within days of the Taliban seizing power, Ahmadi was jailed for being gay. He escaped only after bribing a guard before changing his name altogether.
But the Taliban continue to hunt him down.
He has been sent several threatening letters from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the state’s religious morality police.
One letter seen by Metro.co.uk says ‘residents’ have complained about Ahmadi being a ‘supporter of homosexuals’ who carries out ‘indecent acts’.
Ministry officials called on him to be arrested ‘as soon as possible’.
‘In order to prevent moral corruption in society, there should be legal punishment,’ the letter concludes.
‘Life is very difficult for me, I am under serious threats, and I can’t go anywhere because of fear the Taliban are looking for me,’ Ahmadi says.
The Taliban’s government promised a more modern Islamic rule. It never happened (Picture: AP)
He says that last year, Taliban forces took his boyfriend’s phone at a checkpoint which was full of gay sex videos.
Ahmadi had no other choice but to run from his home, adding he was arrested a second time for being gay in July.
‘The Taliban wanted to execute me,’ he says. ‘I was severely tortured to the point of my life. Six people anally raped me for three days with a machine gun.
‘I experienced electric and cable torture in prison, all day and night.’
Ahmadi shared with Metro.co.uk a photograph of himself following one of the two beatings, showing his back covered in lash marks and cuttings.
His times in prison remain scarred in his mind. He also had it etched, literally: his back and buttocks remain covered in bruises, his wrists scarred from the handcuffs he wore for months.
‘At 5am, when the Taliban invited the prisoners to prayer, I hid in the garbage truck of the prison,’ he explains.
Ahmadi stayed inside for some three hours before escaping the prison and ‘walking for 24 hours to Jalalabad,’ the capital of the eastern Nangarhar Province.
LGBTQ+ Afghans face ‘hidden genocide’, says local activist
Nemat Sadat, the executive director of the Afghan LGBTQ+ non-profit Roshaniya, says Sabouri was someone with his whole life ahead of him.
Now he is a ‘casualty’ of the Tablian regime.
‘During the 20 years of the democratic era, homosexuality was criminalised and LGBT+ people had no rights but today they cannot even breathe and face a hidden genocide under the Taliban,’ Sadat warns.
‘Hamed endured discrimination his whole life for being gay and his life came to an abrupt end with no one there to help him before his life was taken away from him.’
Nafar Jan, of LGBTQ+ campaign group Rainbow Afghanistan, says things are only getting worse for people like Sabouri and Ahmadi.
‘Day by day, the Taliban is getting more powerful and any individual can imagine how hard it can be to breathe under a terrorist regime’s government,’ he says.
‘LGBTIQ members have to act normal so that they don’t get us killed. Many of us can’t even go outside.
Activists say dozens of LGBTQ+ Afghans are arrested each day (Picture: Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
‘No one really knows how many LGBTIQ members are being killed, abused, brain-washed, tortured, bullied or disowned daily by their families and the society.’
Jan says dozens of LGBTQ+ Afghans are arrested and questioned each day at Kabul and provincial security zones. Some are kidnapped and killed.
‘All the LGBTIQ-supporting governments and organizations have stopped their aids, reliefs and evacuation plans for us. We’re being forgotten and left to die silently,’ he adds.
LGBTQ+ Afghans not evacuated by western governments now feel abandoned (Picture: SOPA Images_
Behesht Collective, which provides mental health support and shelter for LGBTQ+ youth, says the Taliban have ‘buried the aspirations of 1,250 LGBTQ+ Afghans’ who are members of the network — ‘hundreds and thousands’ remain stuck.
‘LGBTQ+ people will never accept Sharia Law because Sharia Law is meant to eliminate us,’ Behesht Collective says.
Sadat, of Roshaniya, feels it’s now or never to help them escape.
‘If the world doesn’t intervene now to grant asylum protection now then I’m afraid that the entire LGBT+ community in Afghanistan will perish within a few years,’ Sadat says.
‘We cannot let this happen.’
After Sabouri’s killing, Ahmadi left his home once again, as he has done so many times now. He is homeless and unable to work because of the threats.
Ahmadi once begged a man to give him money. The man, 60, proceeded to rape him before giving him 1,000 Afghanis (£10).
He is safe for now, he feels. Whether he will be tomorrow, though, he can’t be certain.
Ahmadi found out last month that Sabouri’s family has fled Afghanistan. He yearns for the day he can do the same.
‘I know I will be killed,’ he says, ‘if I am arrested again, I will be executed.’
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‘I know I will be killed.’