Taliban official says taking pictures is 'major sin'

A Taliban official said journalists were committing "a major sin" by taking pictures, Afghan media said, Report informs.

Television and pictures of living things were banned under the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, but a similar edict has so far not been imposed since authorities took back power in Afghanistan in 2021.

"Taking pictures is a major sin," Mohammad Hashem Shaheed Wror, a senior official in the justice ministry, told a seminar for department staff in the capital Kabul, according to footage broadcast by several media.

"Our media friends, Afghans, they are always busy in this sin and always pulled towards immorality."

Officials in the Taliban birthplace of Kandahar were ordered this week not to take any images of living things, but the ban did not extend to media or the public, the spokesperson for Kandahar's governor, Mahmood Azzam, told AFP.