Anand Gopal, in this month's Harper's, reports on torture and executions by police in Kandahar.
Kandahar’s Mystery Executions
Are the Afghan police using torture to achieve peace?
The first bodies were found early in the morning, after the call to prayer, in the tall reeds abutting the southern edge of Kandahar city. One was lying faceup, lower lip split, stab wounds to the face and stomach, a hole where the left eye had been. The second, a few yards away, had brown-black mottled skin and burnt hair. The third body’s neck was partially sawed through, and the face bore the same pattern of black scarring and singed hair. All three were handcuffed.
The next day, in Subdistrict 7, a working-class area to the north of the city, a shopkeeper discovered a corpse in a canal. A report by the United Nations noted: “Head riddled with bullets and was smashed completely.” Two days later, at Mirwais hospital, Kandahar’s main health center, two bodies came in without any visible marks except a small hole, apparently made with a drill bit, in each of the skulls.
The report is unfortunately behind a paywall.
The report focuses on Abdul Wahood Sarhadi Jajo, a commander under Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq.
According to his Facebook page, Abdul Wadood Sarhadi Jajo supports women's rights, admires modernizing reformers from Afghan history, and despises the Taliban. My sense, from reading the posts, was that these convictions were heartfelt. If you listen to stories in the bazaar, though, you'll also learn that Jajo forced those violating the city's one-person-to-a-motorcycle rule to kneel on the asphalt and kiss the sizzling hot exhaust pipe (Taliban are known to prefer doubling up on motorcycles); that he stripped prisoners naked and paraded them around his base; that men under his command used rape as an interrogation tool; and that when executing prisoners he might resort to a pistol or electrocution, but that he preferred beheadings.
Jajo was reported as assassinated in May of this year.
A suicide bombing Sunday in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar claimed the life of a prominent police commander who had been accused by local residents of involvement in serious human-rights violations.
Abdul Wadood Sarhadi Jajo, a police commander subordinate to Maj. Gen. Abdul Razzik, the province's powerful top cop, was killed in Kandahar's Police District 9 by a suicide bomber wearing a burqa, said Zia Durrani, the Kandahar provincial police spokesman.
Suicide Bomber Kills Afghan Police Commander in Kandahar, Wall Street Journal
In the above
Wall Street Journal article, there is an account by Meena Intizar, a Kandahar resident and poet, who had reported to authorities, including Abdul Raziq, that Kandahar police had raided her home, and stolen goods and money.
For which, Jajo had raided her home.
After she wrote a post about the incident on Facebook and complained to the provincial office of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the office of Gen. Razzik, Ms. Intizar said Mr. Jajo came to her house, with a prosecutor, a detective and more than a dozen policemen in tow.
"They took as all to a room and locked the door," she recalled. "We were five women and a little girl in the house."
As the women hurriedly pulled on headscarves, Mr. Jajo accused them of being immodest, Ms. Intizar said.
"This is my kingdom, and your father doesn't rule here," Ms. Intizar recalled Mr. Jajo saying as she tried to make a phone call.
Kandahar police officials did not respond to repeated requests to contact Mr. Jajo for his account. Ms. Intizar said she was forced to flee for Kabul after Mr. Jajo threatened her with rape and murder.
"I can't go back to Kandahar," she said. "Jajo has threatened to kill my entire family ... He made rape threats as well."
Earlier in May, Alissa Rubin had written of another torture and execution in Kandahar.
A family’s accusations that the police in Kandahar tortured and killed their son while he was in custody has again focused attention on a wave of disappearances and deaths in the southern province.
On Sunday, the family of Hazrat Ali, a 23-year-old plumber, was joined by dozens of Kandahar residents as they brought his scarred body, wrapped in a white burial shroud, to the police headquarters in Kandahar city as a public protest. They accused the police of torturing him for days before his death. Mr. Ali had been arrested after being accused of fighting with a neighbor.
“My neighbors and relatives asked that I let the world know that these things are happening in Kandahar. The police are stealing and torturing innocent people, without going to the judicial system,” said Abdul Ghani, Mr. Ali’s father.
A Death Draws Attention to Afghan Police Methods, New York Times
Matt Aikins then wrote
a twitter essay on Raziq, on American support for him, and on torture in Afghanistan.
While investigating his story on executions and torture in Kandahar, Anand Gopal was detained at a checkpoint and taken to Jajo. Jajo had Gopal thrown in jail.
In the evening, an American military officer showed up, who served as an adviser to Abdul Raziq. After the American advisor reported back to Raziq, Raziq had Gopal released from jail, and ejected from Kandahar.
Gopal's story, from Kandahar, of torture and executions there, is an important one. And a brave one to investigate and report on.