FEATURE6 WESTERN CORRUPTION IN AFGHANISTAN
Ringed with razor wire and high fences, Afghanistan’s counter narcotics court is supposed to be a beacon of incorruptible justice in a country, and a court system, awash with corruption.
The high-security compound on the outskirts of Kabul was designed with British and American help to convict Afghanistan’s most wanted drug lords — the untouchables at the top of the heroin cartels — and the results have been extraordinary. So good that more than 9,000 defence attorneys have gone on strike, claiming justice there is a sham.
“The judges just ignore the evidence, they don’t care,” said Rohullah Qarizada, the president of the Afghan Independent Bar Association. “They just convict. The role of the defence lawyers is merely symbolic.”
Conviction rates are more than 90 per cent. In the nine months to December, the Criminal Justice Task Force (CJTF) primary court convicted 310 out of 343 people. The appeal court convicted 394 of 427. The bar association says it is proof that defence lawyers have been sidelined. Court insiders say it is because the burden of proof is set high before the cases come to trial.
Built with $8 million (£5 million) of US money, the task force has 12 dedicated judges, 30 prosecutors and 35 investigators who all get generous salary top-ups from the UK and beefed-up personal security worth £1.2 million a year. The former chief judge was assassinated. “The judges and prosecutors get their salaries from the UK embassies so they just convict people to keep them happy,” Mr Qarizada said.
Defence attorneys have refused CJTF cases since January 9. Their strike is likely to fuel accusations that the West is guilty of its own corruption at a time when the international community is heaping pressure on President Karzai to root out graft and tackle the heroin cartels that permeate his own family.
Mr Qarizada said he defended a man at the CJTF who was sentenced to 16 years in prison in a case of mistaken identity. “I brought 50 people from his village, the mullah, the district governor and five members of parliament who all said he was Mahmood, not Ahmad,” Mr Qarizada said. “One policeman who arrested him said he’d heard his mother call him Ahmad, so the judge gave him 16 years in prison.”
At a trial in November, the primary court sat for less than two hours to convict five people to a total of 55 years in prison. After more than six months collecting telephone intercepts and forensic reports, there was no cross-examination of witnesses and attorneys simply read out opening statements to a panel of three judges. The verdict was recorded the next day, without calling court into session.
The defence lawyers are also angry at the way they are treated by the state authorities. Nasar Mohammed Helmandwal, who defended one of the most notorious smugglers to be convicted at the CJTF, said his offices were illegally raided by the police. “We just want respect,” he said. “The court accepts whatever the foreigners tell them. They don’t listen to us.”
A spokesman for the British embassy said they were aware of the dispute. “The role of defence lawyers is … extremely important. In any transparent and effective justice system a fair acquittal should have equal weight with a fair conviction.”
(jerome starkey, The Times, 28January2010)
