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| Afghanistan |
| Afghan Security Chiefs Resign |
| 2010-06-06 |
| Afghanistan's two top security officials resigned on Sunday, hours after President Hamid Karzai ordered a judicial review of all cases against suspected Taliban insurgents, promising that those incarcerated because of doubtful evidence will be released. Mr. Karzai's office said Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh were asked to quit because they failed to ensure security around a nationwide assembly, or peace jirga, in Kabul last week. The Taliban attacked the gathering with rockets and suicide bombers, causing minor disruptions but no fatalities. Two Afghan officials close to the situation, however, said that tensions had been building between Mr. Karzai and the security chiefs for some time. Mr. Karzai's order of the prisoner review Sunday was the final straw, they said. Messrs. Atmar and Saleh resigned after a meeting with Mr. Karzai at the presidential palace Sunday afternoon, an encounter that one adviser close to Mr. Karzai described as stormy. "Both of them told Karzai that it is not fair that our men are risking their lives to arrest terrorists and insurgents and that he was then releasing them," the adviser said. At a press conference on Sunday, Mr. Saleh, who headed the National Directorate for Security, said he offered his resignation because he "failed to provide proper security" for the peace jirga. He added that there were also "hundreds of other reasons" for quitting—reasons he said he didn't want to discuss. Mr. Karzai's decree on Taliban prisoners was his first official response to the peace jirga, which explored ways to end the country's nearly 9-year-old insurgency. The conference recommended that all militant suspects being held in Afghan jails and in U.S. military custody be released if allegations against them aren't substantiated. Mr. Karzai's decree called for that prisoner review process to begin with the establishment of a committee led by the Ministry of Justice, which would review the cases of Afghan prisoners who had been detained without "sufficient legally binding criminal evidence." |
| Posted by:tipper |