ONE OF Afghanistan’s most senior government prosecutors said yesterday that he was forced into retirement after aggressively promoting corruption investigations against top officials, including one of Hamid Karzai’s most trusted aides.
Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar, a lawyer well-regarded by foreign experts, lost his position as deputy attorney general at a time of growing US impatience with President Karzai over his apparent attempts to block sensitive cases and to rein in the powers of the western-backed major crime task force, the so-called “Afghan FBI”, hailed as the centrepiece of a new push against corruption.
Speaking in his flat in Kabul, Mr Faqiryar said he was forced to retire last week because of his stance against the corrupt activities of some of the country’s best-connected people, including Mohammed Zia Salehi, head of Afghanistan’s national security council. Mr Salehi was arrested in July after accepting a bribe that helped to derail a fraud inquiry.
But there are fears the breakthrough investigation, led by an elite unit supported by officers from the FBI and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, could come to nothing after Mr Karzai put pressure on the attorney general’s office for Mr Salehi to be released.
Yesterday Mr Faqiryar said the Salehi investigation was just the tip of an iceberg of cases against top officials prepared by Afghan investigators and prosecutors. – (Guardian service)