One of the country’s most senior prosecutors said on Saturday that Afghan President Hamid Karzai fired him last week after he repeatedly refused to block corruption investigations at the highest levels of Karzai’s government.
Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar, the former deputy attorney general, said investigations of more than two dozen senior Afghan officials were being held up or blocked outright by Karzai, Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko and others.
Faqiryar’s account of the troubles plaguing the anti-corruption investigations has been largely corroborated in interviews with five Western officials familiar with the cases. They say that Karzai and others in his government have repeatedly thwarted prosecutions against senior Afghan government figures.
PHOTO: AFP
Earlier this month, Karzai intervened to stop the prosecution of one of his closest aides, Mohammed Zia Salehi, who investigators say had been wiretapped demanding a bribe from another Afghan seeking his help in scuttling a corruption investigation.
Awash in US and NATO money, Karzai’s government is widely regarded as one of the most corrupt in the world. US officials believe that the corruption drives Afghans into the arms of the Taliban.
Faqiryar said his prosecutors had opened cases on at least 25 current or former Afghan officials, including 17 members of Karzai’s Cabinet, five provincial governors and at least three ambassadors. None of the cases, he said, has gone forward, and some have been blocked on orders from Karzai. He did not elaborate on each case, and it was not clear whether Aloko or Karzai were involved in all of the cases.
Faqiryar, a 72-year-old career prosecutor, was fired on Thursday by Karzai after sending a mid-level prosecutor to speak about public corruption on an Afghan television station. However, the TV appearance by the prosecutor was only the immediate cause of his firing, Faqiryar said. The decision by Karzai to remove Faqiryar, he said, was the culmination of a long-running tug-of-war between him and his prosecutors on one side, and Karzai and Aloko on the other.
Faqiryar said his prosecutors had unearthed serious allegations of corruption against several senior Afghan officials. In many of those cases, he said, the prosecutors had substantiated the claims with ample evidence.
Just three of the 25 Afghan officials have been charged, he said, but no verdict was ever rendered. The cases of the other 22 have either been blocked or are lying dormant for inexplicable reasons, he said.
After a career spanning 48 years, Faqiryar said he was looking forward to retirement.
“It’s good to be away from them and not held accountable for their wrong doings,” he said.
Meanwhile, a total of six US troops have died in the latest attacks in Afghanistan’s embattled southern and eastern regions, NATO said yesterday.
One serviceman died in a bombing yesterday in southern Afghanistan, while two others were killed in a bomb attack in the south on Saturday and three in fighting in the east the same day, NATO said. Their identities and other details were being withheld until relatives could be notified.
The latest deaths bring to 41 the number of US forces who have died this month in Afghanistan after last month’s high of 66. A total of 61 international forces have died in the country this month, including seven British troops.
Fighting is intensifying with the addition of 30,000 US troops to bring the total number of international forces in Afghanistan to 120,000 — 100,000 of them from the US. Most of those new troops have been assigned to the southern insurgent strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces, where major battles are fought almost daily as part of a gathering drive to push out the Taliban.
NATO said eight insurgents were killed in joint Afghan-NATO operations on Saturday night in the province of Paktiya, including a Taliban commander, Naman, accused of coordinating roadside bomb attacks and the movement of ammunition, supplies and fighters.
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