Kabul, Sept 18: The powerful police chief of Afghanistan's capital Kabul has been sacked amid a controversial land grab scandal that has implicated top government officials.
State television reported late yesterday that Basir Salangi was removed by president Hamid Karzai's administration at the urging of the interior ministry.
He has been replaced by the director of police
operations, General Baba Jan.
The television report did not give a reason for his
sacking.
Salangi was named by the United Nations last week as being among senior officials, including top ministers, involved in land grabs and forcible evictions in Kabul's Shir Pur district.
Dozens of poor families were forcibly removed from Shir Pur and more than 30 homes were bulldozed in early September.
Plots of Shir Pur land, valued at between 70,000 and
170,000 dollars, were given to most of the Afghan cabinet,
the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said.
The UN's special rapporteur on housing rights Miloon
Kothari urged the Karzai government to sack Salangi, telling
a press conference last week that he was a "human rights
violator."
Kothari, concluding a two-week visit to Kabul, also
accused Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, education
minister Yunus Qanooni and top military commanders of
land-grabbing.
Bureau Report
