Red Carpet: top DC lawmen welcomed Sabet just weeks before police probe was ordered

What does a controversial, but well-connected official of the Western backed Kabul regime do just weeks before his firing for abuse of office?

In the case of the disgraced former Attorney General of Afghanistan, he accepts an expenses paid, red-carpet visit to the cradle of democracy.

So it was that Abdul Jabar Sabet, once President Karzai’s top lawman, now a fugitive from the law, jetted off to Washington D.C. and points west in June of this year.

Sabet was fired by Karzai in July and has since fled Kabul. His whereabouts remain unknown. His successor as Attorney General, Ishaq Alako, has ordered the police to return Sabet to the Afghan capital to face a formal investigation.

The website of the Afghan Embassy in Washington D.C. shows that Sabet made an official visit to the U.S. just three weeks before his dismissal. Trips of this nature by the regime’s ministers are financed by American taxpayers. In Washington, Sabet met with these Bush administration luminaries, among others:

- David P. Johnson, Assistant Secretary of State of the Bureau of International Narcotics Law Enforcement (INL)

- John Walters, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy

- Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia

- Edward Frothingham, Director of Transnational Threats at the Department of Defense

- Bobby Wilkes, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Central Asia

- Mitchell Shivers, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs.

The embassy claims that Sabet briefed officials “on his efforts in strengthening the rule of law and the justice system and in improving administrative governance in Afghanistan.” An odd situation, given that Sabet’s dark secrets were exposed here at skyreporter and elsewhere as early as the spring of 2007.

Despite the evidence, America’s governing elite whisked Sabet off on a cross-country tour – after having him deliver a speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

In Los Angeles, the bearded would-be legal prophet popped by the Department of Homeland Security, then ambled down to the federal Courthouse for a visit with judges of the Central District of California.

Prior to L.A., he dropped into Salt Lake City to hold forth at the University of Utah’s School of Law. After attending the graduation ceremony of 16 Afghan prosecutors, he waxed eloquent to a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune on the importance of having a responsible justice system in Afghanistan.

The resulting story described Sabet as an “American-trained attorney” who “struck optimistic notes about the future of the judicial system in his still war-torn country.”

Perhaps the reporter should be forgiven this misleading prose, considering how energetically the Bush administration’s people at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul have promoted Sabet. In the winter and spring of 2007, for example, embassy personnel ensured that Sabet’s crime fighting prowess was stressed to every U.S. network news team that passed through Kabul.

This pitch was echoed by Drug Enforcement Agency operatives, so much so that a leading anchor with one American network was convinced to pal around with the Attorney General, going so far as to be filmed patting Sabet on the shoulder, and advising him to be careful in his fearless exploits.

Next, where will Karzai’s former legal Rasputin turn up next? Pakistan, Dubai - or Montreal, Canada?