An elderly Afghan man is standing trial charged with war crimes allegedly carried out while he was in charge of a notorious jail where inmates were abused in the 1980s.
Abdul Rafief, 76, said it was a case of mistaken identity and he was not the commander at Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul.
He told a Dutch court in The Hague on Wednesday that he denied the allegations that as prison commander he abused political opponents.
“I am not the person that you are talking about,” he said.
Appearing in court in a wheelchair, the father of four said he could not remember his own name.
Dutch prosecutors urged judges Thursday to impose a 12-year prison sentence over his involvement in war crimes at Pul-e-Charkhi in the1980s.
Mr Rafief is accused of living in the Netherlands under a false name and being commander between 1983 and 1990 of the prison where regime opponents were held without fair trial in “appalling conditions".
Dutch war crimes prosecutors are convinced they have the right man after interviewing about 25 witnesses around the world and tapping the phones of the suspect and his family before arresting him at his home in the southern Dutch city of Kerkrade in 2019.
Prosecutors told judges that the suspect was commander and Head of Political Affairs from 1983-1990 at the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul, where political prisoners were detained in cramped, filthy cells and routinely tortured.
Afghanistan's Soviet-backed government was fighting a guerrilla war against mujahideen rebels at the time, following the Soviet invasion in 1979.
The trial is the latest in a series of efforts in European countries to bring people to account for crimes in conflict-torn countries, including Syria and Afghanistan.
“This trial is about a man, whom we believe committed a number of war crimes in Kabul,” prosecutor Mirjam Blom said.
“We suspect that he, as commander and chief of political affairs, was working in the prison where inmates were arbitrarily robbed of their personal freedom and treated them inhumanely.”
Prosecutors said police started investigating in 2012 after blogs said that the former commander of Pul-e-Charkhi could be living in the Netherlands.
“Finally we picked up his trail. The public prosecution service has the point of view that he is here (in the Netherlands) under a false name,” said Ms Blom.
Dutch authorities spoke to 25 witnesses in several countries and used “countless” open-source materials. “We are convinced that we have the right person,” Ms Blom said.
Notorious for its grim conditions, Pul-e-Charkhi remained in use under various regimes until the Taliban freed prisoners from it last August.
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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More from Neighbourhood Watch
Recycle Reuse Repurpose
New central waste facility on site at expo Dubai South area to handle estimated 173 tonne of waste generated daily by millions of visitors
Recyclables such as plastic, paper, glass will be collected from bins on the expo site and taken to the new expo Central Waste Facility on site
Organic waste will be processed at the new onsite Central Waste Facility, treated and converted into compost to be re-used to green the expo area
Of 173 tonnes of waste daily, an estimated 39 per cent will be recyclables, 48 per cent organic waste and 13 per cent general waste.
About 147 tonnes will be recycled and converted to new products at another existing facility in Ras Al Khor
Recycling at Ras Al Khor unit:
Plastic items to be converted to plastic bags and recycled
Paper pulp moulded products such as cup carriers, egg trays, seed pots, and food packaging trays
Glass waste into bowls, lights, candle holders, serving trays and coasters
Aim is for 85 per cent of waste from the site to be diverted from landfill
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Michael Beckley, Cornell Press
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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