Afghan court sentences former spy chief to death

Yousuf Azimy

KABUL (Reuters) – An Afghan court sentenced a former spy
chief to death for killing hundreds of people during communist
rule, the first such punishment for war crimes after decades of
conflict in the country.

Assadullah Sarwari, who has been detained since 1992 when
U.S.-backed mujahideen (holy warriors) overthrew a
Soviet-backed communist regime, said he would appeal against
the verdict.

Chief judge Abdul Basit Bakhtyari drew applause from many
in the court on announcing the judgment.

“Given the evidence, we … sentence you Sarwari … to
death for killing hundreds of Muslim and Mujahid people in the
feared communist prisons under your control,” Bakhtyari said.

Sporting a short gray and black beard, the 64-year-old
Sarwari stood calmly as the court announced the verdict and
said he would appeal.

Sarwari served as head of intelligence when thousands of
people were killed and tortured for opposing the communist
regime.

After heading the intelligence network, Sarwari worked as
deputy prime minister and then as Afghanistan’s ambassador to
Yemen.

The death sentence was the first for war crimes in
Afghanistan, where successive regimes have been accused of
abuses in 25 years of conflict in the country.

WAR CRIMES

The judgment came more than two months after President
Hamid Karzai’s government adopted a plan to address war crimes
and other human rights abuses committed during the conflict.

The plan envisages setting up a task force to draw up a
strategy to deal with the abuses.

The proposed task force of nominees from Afghanistan’s
Independent Human Rights Commission, the United Nations and the
Afghan government will have until the end of next year to
present its proposals.

Rights groups have welcomed the action plan, which rules
out amnesties for serious abuses. Concerns had been raised that
any suspects in Karzai’s government and a new parliament
inaugurated this month might try to block prosecutions.

In October, a Dutch court jailed two police officers of
Afghanistan’s former communist regime for 12 and nine years
after convicting them of war crimes and torture while serving
with intelligence services.

The two jailed in the Netherlands were Hesamuddin Hesam,
the former head of the Khad secret police between 1983 and
1991, and its head of interrogation, Habibullah Jalalzoy.

Dutch prosecutors estimated 200,000 political opponents
were tortured by various branches of the Afghan security
apparatus under communist rule and about 50,000 died.