10 January 2008 :

Government officials are defending last month's execution of 15 prisoners, despite of claims that the operation was a roadside slaughter. The authorities have been severely criticized for the escape of Afghanistan's most notorious criminal Timor Shah, who was sentenced to death for kidnapping, rape and murder. It is not clear how Timor Shah managed to avoid the 7 October execution, which reportedly took place at 9:30pm by the side of a road on the outskirts of Kabul.
General Abdul Salam Esmat, head of Afghanistan's prisons, was evasive about the circumstances of the escape. But Afghan officials remain unrepentant, despite the controversy and an ongoing investigation. "[Afghanistan] has full authority to implement its civil and Islamic laws," said the president's spokesman Humayun Hamidzada. "As long as Afghanistan's laws allow for execution, the government will implement it and will not be pressured by anyone." A panel of judges and prosecutors appointed by President Hamid Karzai spent a year reviewing the prisoners' files, he added. But Lal Gul, head of the Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation, said the process was flawed. "We have looked at the files of some of those executed. Deficiencies can be seen in the investigations," he said, claiming that some of the convicts had no access to a lawyer, and were imprisoned as a result of ethnic and tribal discrimination. He says his organization supplied this information to the death penalty panel. "The government needs to investigate those prosecutors and judges who ordered the executions, because innocent people have been killed and we can prove this," said Lal Gul. "Haji Mohammad Hussain [one of those executed] was arrested because of a personal enmity," he claimed. "The regional district chief, the provincial governor, members of parliament from Farah province, regional people, district and provincial councils and the head of the Solidarity Programme, Sebghatullah Mujadeddi, all gave us documents that proved his innocence. But the prosecutors and judges gave him the death sentence."