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| Afghanistan |
| Former Afghan Spy Chief Sentenced to Death |
| 2006-02-25 |
| A Kabul court on Saturday found a communist-era intelligence chief guilty of ordering hundreds of killings a quarter-century ago and sentenced him to death by firing squad. Relatives of the dead cried out: "God is Great!" Asadullah Sarwari headed the government's feared intelligence department in 1978 after a Soviet-backed communist takeover, which was followed by a ruthless crackdown on its opponents. He later served as vice president. "The government at the time was like a machine and I was just a part of the machine," Sarwari, 64, wearing glasses and sporting a graying beard, told the court. The court heard testimony Saturday from more than 20 witnesses who claimed to have lost relatives, and saw video footage of documents, allegedly signed by Sarwari, in which he ordered killings. Ghalam Sakhi Abasy, the state prosecutor, told The Associated Press that he had documented evidence of more than 400 killings ordered by Sarwari. "According to the evidence, on video tape and written, and the participation of witnesses in an open court, I sentence you to death," Judge Abdul Basit Dakhatyari said. He imposed the maximum sentence for the murders of "hundreds of mujahedeen and innocent people." The mujahedeen fought against the communist-era regime. The verdict was greeted with chanting and applause from people in court. Sarwari was cleared on a second charge of conspiracy against a post-communist government of the early 1990s. Afghanistan's human rights commission welcomed the first prosecution for crimes against humanity in the country as a move toward ending impunity, but the group's leader criticized the chaotic conduct of the trial as "weak and lazy." Sarwari conducted his own defense. Sarwari's son Ahmad Khalid said his father would appeal. Sarwari had spent 13 years in custody before the trial. He was arrested in 1992 when Islamic guerrillas gained control of Kabul after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. He was held by the Northern Alliance after the capital fell to the Taliban in 1996, and was returned to a Kabul jail cell following the late-2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban. Ahmad Amin Mujadedi, one of the witnesses who testified against Sarwari, said he had been arrested in Kabul at age 15 with more than 40 other relatives because their family were religious leaders. He said the women and children, including himself, were released, but the men were assumed to have been killed. "In our family we still have widows who are waiting for their husbands. We have mothers who are waiting for their sons," Mujadedi said. "When I pass this news to them that Sarwari was sentenced to death, those widows and mothers will be very happy." The head of the Afghanistan rights commission, Ahmad Nader Nadery, said there was evidence of systematic torture, disappearances and extra-judicial killings by the intelligence apparatus Sarwari headed. But Nadery said Afghanistan's fledgling legal system was not yet ready to try such cases and noted Sarwari had to conduct his own defense after his counsel resigned and no replacement could be found, and witnesses were not properly cross-examined at the four hearings. "He is one of the notorious people in the history of Afghanistan, but it's a lost opportunity that his trial was conducted in a weak and lazy way," Nadery said. Rights groups have called for a war crimes tribunal to bring justice for gross abuses in Afghanistan's bloody past -- including those committed by former mujahedeen leaders who were key players in the civil war and have become lawmakers and figures in the present government. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |