VP Dostum returns to face charges
KABUL: After more than a year in exile, Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum returned to his native Afghanistan on Sunday facing criminal charges of rape and kidnapping, as well as accusations of brutality, human rights abuses and killing his first wife.
Waiting to greet him on Sunday at Kabul’s international airport was a government delegation and apparently, a suicide bomber.
An array of top officials met his plane and, despite the criminal charges against him, they gave him safe passage — not to jail, but to his office and home, in a deal that Afghan officials have said was negotiated by President Ashraf Ghani in the wake of protests and unrest among his fellow Uzbeks.
Moments after he left the airport, however, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the traffic circle at the exit, killing 20 people, including nine members of a security detail assigned to Mr Dostum, and wounding 90 others, according to police and health officials.
“Just as we passed the roundabout, we heard a boom,” Mr Dostum told a crowd of thousands of supporters gathered outside his office in downtown Kabul to cheer his return. “I pray that all the wounded survive.”
The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, according to Site, the extremist monitoring group.
His supporters dismissed the many charges against Mr Dostum. “He is a leader who has millions of supporters,” Mullah Mohammad Qasim said. “All of those allegations against him are baseless lies.”
The government insisted that the criminal charges remained active, even though they date from November 2016 and have resulted in no arrests. Mr Dostum and nine of his bodyguards are accused of abducting a political opponent, Ahmad Ishchi, and of beating him repeatedly.
Mr Dostum’s return from exile is the latest episode in the tumultuous career of the Uzbek leader, an illiterate former communist enforcer turned warlord who at one time or another was allied with every side in Afghanistan’s long war — including the Taliban — and turned on most of them.
He is accused of war crimes, including allowing his men to suffocate thousands of Taliban prisoners in locked truck containers.