One of the Taliban’s founders, who gained notoriety for enforcing harsh rules the last time the militants ruled Afghanistan, says the group plans to resume executions and amputations. Taliban leader Nooruddin Turabi said the cutting off of hands and similar punishments are extremely important for security.

He said that the country’s leadership is debating whether they would continue to administer these penalties in public, as they formerly did – sometimes in front of large audiences at a Kabul sports stadium.

Even as he spoke of the benefits of public amputations to deter criminality, the official stated that this was not the Taliban that the world had previously known. Judges who arbitrate disputes may include women this time, he added.

According to Turabi, who spoke to a female journalist in Kabul on Thursday, the new administration will allow televisions, smartphones, and the media.

“No one will tell us what our laws should be,” Turabi said.

Turabi, who is now in his 60s, was the Taliban’s minister of vice and virtue from 1996 until the United States started its longest war in 2001. At the time, the department’s morality police were enforcing a stringent interpretation of Islamic criminal law, prohibiting women from leaving the house and patrolling the streets.

When the Taliban retook control this month, just as US soldiers were leaving after 20 years of fighting, the Islamist organization resurrected the ministry by forming an all-male government.

The reestablishment of the ministry raised doubts about the Taliban’s claims that it had reformed. Many Afghans, like international powers, are watching and waiting with bated breath as extremists pledge increased tolerance while demonstrating that intimidation will remain essential to their authority.

Taliban gunmen in the western city of Herat barred some women, including teachers and pupils, from leaving their houses and ordered others to conceal their faces, according to Human Rights Watch.