The International Criminal Court on Monday released previously sealed details behind arrest warrants for two senior Taliban figures, describing a state policy that stripped Afghan women and girls of education, movement and basic legal protections while enabling murder, torture and enforced disappearance.
Haibatullah Akhundzada, the movement's supreme leader, and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, who has served as chief justice since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, have been sought since the court disclosed the warrants in July 2025. Monday's filing explains what pretrial judges concluded when they authorized the charges, rather than announcing new defendants.
What the judges documented
According to a summary published in The Hague, the judges found the two men "implemented a governmental policy that resulted in severe violations of fundamental rights and freedoms of the civilian population of Afghanistan" in connection with persecution on gender grounds.
The underlying conduct, the court said, included murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and enforced disappearance carried out as part of that policy. While the Taliban have imposed sweeping restrictions on the entire population, the judges singled out women and girls as deliberate targets, citing bans on secondary schooling, university attendance, public expression and free movement.
The warrants had stayed confidential until now. Legal experts said unsealing the reasoning matters for victims' groups and for governments weighing whether to execute arrests if either man travels abroad, even though Afghanistan is not an ICC member state and the Taliban reject the court's authority.
Restrictions on daily life
United Nations monitors have tracked a sharp contraction in women's public presence since 2021. The court's summary cited U.N. figures indicating that about half of Afghan women now leave home only once or twice a month because of Taliban rules and enforcement.
UN Women has said Afghanistan remains the only country that forbids girls from secondary education and bars women from universities. Secondary schools for girls have been closed for years, and recent decrees have further limited employment, health care access and travel without a male guardian.
Taliban spokesmen routinely describe the policies as protective of Islamic values. They have not commented on Monday's disclosure. Human-rights investigators say morality-enforcement units continue to detain women for dress or travel violations, feeding the pattern the ICC judges linked to persecution.
Enforcement and diplomacy
ICC member states are obliged to cooperate with arrest warrants, but practical enforcement depends on custody and extradition politics. Akhundzada rarely appears in public and is believed to remain in Afghanistan; Haqqani has operated within the Taliban's judicial apparatus in Kabul.
Western governments have maintained limited diplomatic contact with the Taliban while funding humanitarian aid through U.N. channels. Monday's release adds a formal criminal narrative to parallel U.N. documentation, potentially complicating any future normalization talks that hinge on women's rights benchmarks.
The court said further procedural steps would unfold under seal unless judges order additional public releases. Victims' advocates welcomed the transparency but noted that accountability inside Afghanistan still appears distant while the Taliban control courts, prisons and policing.