Sitting on Files

Nothing is ever heard about the findings of commissions of enquiry set up after every attack on military bases.Officials in the Ministry of Interior Affairs (MoI) say the police complete s in every case, and hand over the report to the justice and judicial institutions. The Attorney General (AG) Office confirms this each time but says the incident has to be probed further.
Any further probe by independent authorities is to be sure to draw a blank.
The most recent of the investigations were into the attacks on the military hospital in Kabul and later, the assault by the Taleban on the military base, Shahin 209, in Balkh.
MoI officials confirm commissions of enquiry have been set up in both cases but nothing else is forthcoming. Will those found responsible of carelessness in discharging their duties be punished? The AG Office also does not give precise figures of individuals under investigation or how many dossiers there are.There are bloody attacks over the past two years that are not on the list of incidents under probe. On Aug 7, 2015, a massive blast was reported in the Shah Shaheed area of Kabul at 10:30 am on the same day that both a NATO military base in Kabul airport came under attack and a suicide bomber detonated himself at 7.30 in the evening at a police training centre in Afshar, Kabul.
The “Bloody Friday” attacks killed 42 Afghan soldiers and civilians, and also one NATO soldier while injuring at least 400 other people.
On Feb 1, 2016, a suicide attacker infiltrated the police base in Dehmazang and killed 20 people and injured 29.
Twenty five days later another person detonated himself in front of the Ministry of Defence. Fifteen security officials died in the blast, and 31 were injured.
On April 19, two armed attackers breached security and entered a building assigned to “high-ranking authorities”. The death toll was shocking: 64 killed and 347 injured.
On Thursday, July 30 last year, a convoy of graduating students from the police academy in Maidan Wardak going to Kabul was targeted and 30 soldiers were killed; 60 were injured.
On Wednesday, March 1, this year, three people were killed and 38 injured in two suicide attacks launched in the 6th and 12th districts of Kabul city.

Lackadaisical?
Najib Danesh, acting MoI spokesperson, says investigation is not the task of police but that of the AG Office, which must be sent a preliminary report within 72 hours by the police.
According to him, in all the above mentioned cases the reports have been filed and the file sent to the AG Office. The latter office must finish the work on a case within two weeks and send it to the courts, he adds.But despite the passage of many months, the AG Office has neither finalised findings nor sent the dossiers to the courts. Kabir Ranjbar, head of Afghanistan’s Democrat Lawyers Union, also says that based on the law, the AG Office should complete its investigation in a case within two weeks and if this is impossible, it can seek more time from the primary and appeals courts. The courts are authorised to give up to three months time.
Ranjbar believes that the AG Office is not very serious in reviewing dossiers and pays even less attention when it is military dossiers.

Jamshed Rasouli, the spokesperson in the AG Office, rejects Ranjbar’s views. He says the office probed 420 defence related cases, particularly administrative corruption, last year. One hundred and thirty seven were forwarded to the respective courts.