WASHINGTON — President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan acknowledged Sunday for the first time that he had personally intervened to free a top political aide who had been detained on graft charges by two U.S.- backed Afghan anti-corruption units.
The aide, Mohammed Zia Saleh, head of administration for Afghanistan’s National Security Council, was arrested in late July after investigators wiretapped Saleh apparently soliciting bribes from a money-exchange operation.
Saleh was released on the order of the attorney general’s office, a move many officials suspected Karzai was behind but one he did not acknowledge until Sunday.
Not only did he intervene, Karzai told ABC’s “This Week,” “I intervened very, very strongly.”
Karzai continued: “This man was taken out of his house in the middle of the night by 30 Kalashnikov- toting masked men in the name of Afghan law enforcement. This is exactly reminiscent of the days of the Soviet Union where people were taken away from their homes by armed people in the name of the state and thrown into obscure prisons and in some sort of kangaroo courts.”
Karzai promised new instructions today for anti- corruption units — the American-mentored Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigative Unit.
