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Asadullah Khalid has a very dark and sinster past that includes corruption and gross human rights abuses. He is accused of personally beating and torturing detainees in Afghanistan in 2007, according to CBS news.
President Hamid Karzai has “nominated a cabinet minister to head the country's spy agency who has been accused of involvement in torture, drug-trafficking and corruption”, according to report in the AFP (see article: New Afghan spy chief faces torture, graft claims http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...3ad4b8b211.3d1 ).
Asadullah Khalid was formerly the Minister of Tribal and Border Affairs. He was former Governor of Kandahar Province in Afghanistan. He previously served as Governor of Ghazni Province, from 2001 to 2005. He was replaced by Rahmatullah Raufi as the Governor of Kandahar Province in August 2008. Khalid has been introduced as the new head of the Afghan intelligence service NDS and is awaiting the Afghan parliament's approval.
CBC News revealed the existence of top-level government documents confirming the involvement of Khalid in serious human rights abuses, with “his own private dungeon.” Multiple sources report that the private detention centre was "located under the governor's guest house."
Documents also revel that Christopher Alexander (diplomat), a top Canadian official working with the United Nations, alleged that Asadullah Khalid had ordered “the killing of five UN workers by bombing, presumably to protect his narcotics interests” (see article: Afghan governor's rights abuses known in '07 http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stor...ts-abuses.html ).
Ahead of his nomination by President Karzai the U.S. based Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the President to please reconsider his appointment of Khalid, based on these serious charges of murder and corruption. That appeal was apparently rejected by the President who has his own ideas about the man he describes as a "good friend."
"A dark cloud of serious accusations has hung over Asadullah Khalid's head for many years," Brad Adams, Asia director for HRW said.
Appointing him as the head of the NDS "would send a disturbing message that the Afghan government has no intention of ending torture", Adams was quoted as saying in the AFP report.
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