American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has shown a rare video reportedly smuggled out of northwest Pakistan allegedly shows a woman being stoned to death by Taliban militants in the upper region of Orakzai.
Al Aan, a Dubai-based pan-Arab television channel that focuses on women's issues, said it had obtained cellphone footage that it says shows a woman being executed because she was seen out with a man.
The killing reportedly took place two months ago and was smuggled out by a Taliban member who attended the stoning, according to Al Aan. ABC News could not independently confirm the cellphone video's authenticity.
The video, which seems to show a woman tethered to the ground as a group of men throw stones at her, is so graphic that ABC News cannot show it in its entirety. Parts of it air today on the 25th episode of "Brian Ross Investigates."
"It's difficult to know where and when it was shot," says Gayle Lemmon, deputy director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council of Foreign Relations, in an interview with Ross, "It is consistent with videos that have been coming from Taliban-controlled areas since the '90s."
Lemmon says that when women "stray outside the line" in Taliban-controlled areas, they may "face severe punishment."
"Women are respected as carriers of the family honor," says Lemmon, "but they also pay the price."
Also on Friday's show, ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross delves into the secret U.S. air war using unmanned aerial missile strikes to target terrorists and militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The program is now itself being targeted by civil-liberties groups who question the legal limits of the U.S. to launch the attacks outside of Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Joined by former national security advisor Richard Clarke, who was at the helm of the drone program and is now an ABC News consultant, and drone critic Philip Alston, an international law scholar appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the use of U.S. drones on the Afghan border, Ross explores the legal and ethical issues surrounding the program. Watch VIDEO
