KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation on Thursday into the killing by NATO forces of a former governor in southern Afghanistan, his office said.
According to Karzai’s office, troops broke into the house of Haji Ibrahim, a former district governor in the southern Helmand province, earlier this week, killing him and arresting six members of his family.
Gulab Mangal, the Helmand governor, told Karzai preliminary investigations had revealed Ibrahim was innocent, the president’s office said in a statement. Six members of Ibrahim’s family who also “appeared to be innocent” were detained, the statement said.
Karzai had ordered Mangal to open an investigation into the killing, the statement added. Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Helmand provincial administration, told AFP an investigation was already underway. “The governor has written to the NATO forces enquiring the reason behind the killing. But so far, they have not written back,” Ahmadi said.
The US-led NATO force, currently numbering around 150,000 and based in Afghanistan to defeat a Taliban-led Islamic insurgency is usually accused of killing civilians during operations against militants.
In London, British Foreign Secretary William Hague confirmed that a British aid worker was killed by a grenade thrown by a US soldier during an attempt to rescue her from Taliban kidnappers in Afghanistan.
Hague said that members of the US special forces team involved had been disciplined. “Linda Norgrove died as a result of penetration fragmentation injuries to the head and chest,” Hague told parliament after an investigation into the death of the 36-year-old in October.
Initial reports from the botched operation indicated that Norgrove had been killed by her abductors.
Karzai orders probe into NATO killing in Afghanistan
