Revealed: Afghan lie test flops

Published on Thursday 2 September 2010 16:46

They are supposed to be Afghanistan's bravest, straightest legal minds - the men leading President Hamid Karzai's charge to rid the land of corruption.

• Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai Picture: Getty

Yet four of its top prosecutors have failed FBI lie-detector tests meant to weed out the corrupt. They failed when asked if they had accepted a bribe in the past two years but remain in post.

One is in charge of the flagship Anti-Corruption Unit at the attorney general's office, one is in charge of human resources, which staffs the ACU, and one is acting deputy attorney general - Afghanistan's second most senior prosecutor. The fourth man - who denies the claims - was a special adviser to the attorney general for eight months. He is now a legal adviser to the finance minister. All claim the tests were unreliable.

"I respect technology but the polygraph is not suitable for Afghan people," said Ahmed Baig Qaderi, the acting deputy. "Sometimes Afghan people are sick, sometimes they are under pressure, sometimes the polygraph has technical problems."

Mr Qaderi said he took two tests in the past two years. The first was just before he was appointed head of Afghanistan's counter narcotics court. "The result was good," he said. The second, two years later, was just before he left. "I don't know the result of the second test," he said. "The FBI know."

He was appointed deputy attorney general last week when predecessor Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar was fired for allegedly refusing to block investigations into president Karzai's allies. Mr Qaderi's appointment is yet to be confirmed by Mr Karzai.

Only senior officials and prosecutors on sensitive cases are asked to undergo the FBI polygraph. If they pass, they qualify for a generous salary top-up paid by Britain and America, to keep them financially secure. A fifth man, now in charge of the complaints department, was moved out of the anti-corruption unit when investigators found $111,000 in his bank account. Complaints about corruption now come to him.

The revelations further undermine Mr Karzai's claims he is serious about tackling corruption. London, Washington and Brussels fear Nato's counterinsurgency could fail unless the government is cleaned out.

Mr Faqiryar said Mohammed Iqbal Bidar, Sheraqha Shinwari and Kalemullah Malekzai all took polygraph tests and failed.

"They didn't tell me the result," Mr Bidar, 50, said. "But I don't think they were very happy. The other prosecutors said I failed."

Mr Bidar leads the ACU, a 60-strong team and part of the internationally mentored Major Crimes Taskforce. He has been in the job three months but said he does not receive a salary top-up.

He said the testers asked him "stupid questions" such as whether he had ever made a snowman. These were probably "trigger" questions, officials said, to calibrate the machine. "I don't care," Mr Bidar added. "President Karzai appointed me. It's up to him if he wants to get rid of me."

The Scotsman understands Mr Bidar was left in post because attorney general Mohammed Issahq Aloko, an ally of Karzai's, was fed up with people failing the polygraph.Mr Bidar's predecessor, Sheraqha Shinwari, 54, was only in the job a month and admitted failing the test but won't say why."They ask you simple questions. Did you take a bribe? No. Are you living in Afghanistan? Yes. Polygraphs are a new thing in Afghanistan. They can't recognise a person's personality." Mr Shinwari now heads the human resources section which oversees appointments of almost 5,000 staff.

The man before Mr Shinwari was fired by the attorney general for soliciting alcohol, according to former colleagues. He is now running for parliament.

Kalemullah Malekzai, a former special adviser to Mr Aloko from August 2009 to March 2010, denied having taken a polygraph test. He said: "I won't let the foreigners do that, because I trust myself." He said the only corruption case he saw at the attorney general's was a probe into a bank accused of stealing $5 million from a depositor. He said: "I sent it back. It needed reinvestigated."