Deputy Attorney General Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar said his
boss, Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Aloko, wrote a retirement letter for him
earlier this week and that President Hamid Karzai accepted it.
Faqiryar, 72, said he wanted to continue doing his work,
which has involved pursuing corruption allegations against top officials in the
Karzai administration - a task which had put him in the middle of a political
fire storm.
US officials have been pressing Karzai to do more to root
out corruption. Karzai has pushed back, saying that the international community
needs to do more to eliminate corruption in its own contracting procedures and
eliminate terrorist havens outside the borders of Afghanistan.
"Everybody knows how hard I was working as a deputy
attorney general," Faqiryar said.
"It was my responsibility as a top government
official to complete and investigate those cases, especially those where
high-ranking officials were involved in corruption, and this is what I
did."
He said that cases against three or four former Afghan
Cabinet ministers had been completed, but had been put on hold and had not been
sent to the courts. Five provincial governors have been accused of corruption,
he said. Two of the cases involving governors have been sent to court and three
remain under investigation, he said. In addition, Faqiryar said that several
Afghan ambassadors to other nations have been accused of corruption.
"We have worked on so many," he said, unable to
recall the number of cases involving ambassadors.
Faqiryar said another deputy attorney general was being
let go too, but he did not elaborate and the details of that deputy's departure
were unclear.
Faqiryar's departure comes at a time when Congress is
running out of patience with Karzai over the corruption issue.
US Sen. John Kerry traveled to Kabul last week to tell
Karzai that his efforts to battle corruption were crucial if he wanted to
retain the support of US taxpayers at a time when more American troops were
dying in the war. US lawmakers have expressed doubt that the military effort
can succeed without a serious campaign against bribery and graft that have
eroded the Afghan people's trust in their government.
Kerry's visit came shortly after the arrest of one of
Karzai's top advisers, Mohammad Zia Salehi, for allegedly accepting a car in
exchange for his help in exerting pressure on Afghan officials to ease off in
another corruption case involving a company that handles money transfers world
wide. US officials see Salehi's arrest as a test case of Karzai's willingness
to fight corruption.
The presidential palace was angered by Salehi's arrest.
He was released shortly thereafter.
Karzai said he strongly intervened in the Salehi case
because Salehi's civil rights were violated during his arrest.
"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." he said in a recent interview.
"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 in some sort of Kangaroo
courts."
Karzai said the case against Salehi would be allowed to
proceed according to Afghan law, but he has not yet been formally charged.
Soon after Salehi's arrest, Karzai sought more oversight
of the work done by the Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigative
Unit. The two units, which are mentored by US and British law enforcement
officials, conduct corruption probes of high-level Afghan government officials
and then feed cases to Afghan prosecutors.
After hearing from a panel he asked to review the work of
the two units, Karzai released a statement early this month saying that all
cases under investigation or completed should be reviewed by the panel and
reported to the president. That sparked concern that Karzai was attempting to
derail corruption probes of top officials in his government.
After talks with Kerry, Karzai said he would make sure
that two anti-corruption units could pursue investigations free of outside
interference or political meddling. US officials have been anxiously waiting to
see if Karzai will take steps to rein in the anti-corruption investigators, but
the president has not yet announced any new guidelines.