“Forgive me”: Sabet faces a raft of claims by victims of his past crusades and vendettas

The disgraced former Attorney General of Afghanistan, who for three months has been dodging a criminal investigation ordered by his successor, has resurfaced in Kabul, pleading forgiveness from President Hamid Karzai.

Sources in the Afghan capital describe a grovelling Abdul Jabar Sabet “throwing himself on Karzai’s mercy.”  The president fired the mercurial bureaucrat last July amid mounting allegations of gross abuse of office – and after Sabet’s announcement that he would stand as a candidate in this year’s presidential elections.

Shortly afterward, a video emerged and was telecast nationally, showing an evidently intoxicated Sabet dancing wildly at a party, a spectacle sharply at odds with the former Attorney General’s chest-thumping vendetta against Kabul restaurants that serve alcohol.

A chorus of accusations from the victims of Sabet’s crude and often violent brand of strong-arming led to his successor ordering a criminal investigation on Sept. 23rd, together with a request to the Karzai government’s policing authority, the Interior Ministry, to prevent Sabet from leaving the country (see our previous posting “U.S. Officials Shield Accused Kabul Crony From Justice").

As revealed by skyreporter, officials with the U.S. State Department flaunted the terms of the investigation, flying Sabet to New York and Washington D.C. in November for a round of meetings with senior Bush administration figures – all at the expense of American taxpayers.

Our story has opened a floodgate of claims and counter-claims in the American capital. An official with the Afghan Embassy emailed to say that Sabet was not hosted by Ambassador Said T. Jawad, and had not stayed in the embassy’s guest quarters.

Other sources, in Kabul and Washington, indicate that Sabet was put up at a Marriot Hotel convenient to the State Department.

Skyreporter reached the State Department’s “senior advisor on Afghan Justice Reform,” Tim Nusraty, by telephone on Monday to verify claims that he and colleagues from his office were Sabet’s principal sponsors in Washington. 

Nusraty refused to answer a number of specific questions put to him regarding Sabet, referring skyreporter to public affairs. “Speak with her,” he said, “and then I’m sure we’ll be able to talk all about it.”

By post time, neither the spokesperson nor Nusraty had responded to skyreporter’s request.

However, Mr. Nusraty did not deny his department’s bizarre sponsorship of an individual who is arguably the most reviled and controversial of the Karzai regime’s fallen “anti-corruption” officials. The State Department’s evasions, like the disavowals of official Afghan sources, are symptomatic of Sabet’s radioactive aura.

One prominent Kabul businessman, who says he discovered that Sabet had defamed him to an international diplomat, tells skyreporter: “What are the Americans doing, sending a culprit like that to the United States?

“Sabet’s been exposed as a dangerous menace. He’s the opposite of justice, much less justice reform.”

Observers say that Sabet returned to Kabul from Dubai, and turned to a noted Karzai loyalist, the former governor of Helmand province Assadullah Wafa, to escort him in safety to the Presidential Palace.

Sabet is said to have told Karzai that he is withdrawing from the election, though his candidacy has been viewed as little more than a comic nuisance.

Karzai’s much larger concern with Sabet is the avalanche of revelations expected to be set off by any detailed investigation of the allegations against him filed with the current Attorney General, Ishaq Alako, and Interior Minister Hanif Atmar.

While Sabet, during his tenure, failed to send a single significant corruption case to trial, he was a magnet for embarrassing truths, many of which he tried to manipulate to his advantage, according to his accusers.

It is no exaggeration to say that scores of Afghan notables - on both sides of the law - would heave sighs of relief if Abdul Jabar Sabet would simply go away.

That’s not a likely scenario, at least not if Sabet’s debris-strewn career path is anything to go by.

In Kabul and in Washington D.C., they haven’t heard the last of this man, or the damage he’s alleged to have done.