Mystery surrounds move of Afghan ‘torturer in chief’ to U.S. amid allegations of spy agency abuse

 

Tomas van Houtryve/ASSOCIATED PRESS – Haji Gulalai, then an Afghan intelligence chief, is in sunglasses to the right of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in 2002. Gul Agha Sherzai, governor of Kandahar, is on the other side of Karzai.

By Greg Miller, Julie Tate and Joshua Partlow, Tuesday, April 29, 1:15 AM 

In Afghanistan, his presence was enough to cause prisoners to tremble. Hundreds in his organization’s custody were beaten, shocked with electrical currents or subjected to other abuses documented in human rights reports. Some allegedly disappeared.

And then Haji Gulalai disappeared as well.

Graphic

The ten provinces with multiple incidents of torture by Afghanistan’s intelligence service the National Directorate of Security (NDS).

U.S. officials say the Afghan government can’t maintain even a fraction of its road network

He had run Afghan intelligence operations in Kandahar after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 and later served as head of the spy service’s detention and interrogation branch. After 2009, his whereabouts were unknown.