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KABUL – The mayor of Kabul continued to run Afghanistan's capital city Wednesday despite being sentenced to four years in jail for corruption, raising questions about President Hamid Karzai's campaign to prove he's serious about tackling graft and bribery in the government.
Mayor Abdul Ahad Sahebi was found guilty Monday of awarding a contract for a city project without competition. An Afghan court sentenced him to four years in jail and ordered him to repay more than $16,000 involved in the contract.
The mayor, who insists he is innocent, is free pending his appeal to a higher court.
"I am mayor. I am continuing my job," the 63-year-old said at a news conference Wednesday — the second since his conviction.
He said he has asked Karzai, members of parliament, the attorney general and the chief of the Supreme Court to investigate the case.
"I don't accept the court's decision," he said about his conviction. "There is a conspiracy against me."
Hafizullah Hafiz, chief of investigation at the Afghan attorney general's office, said the mayor wrote a letter to the attorney general pleading with officials not to incarcerate him because he was ill. The attorney general forwarded the mayor's request to the court that issued his sentence.
Still, law enforcement officials in Kabul wonder why the mayor is still running the city.
The attorney general's office on Tuesday sent city administration officials a letter stating that the mayor no longer had the right to run the city.
"From the eyes of the attorney general, he is not mayor of Kabul," said Enyatullah Kamal, judicial investigation chief in the Afghan attorney general's office. "It was a surprise that he has gone back to his job — that he dared to give a press conference. The court is the court in this country and nobody can stop the decision of the court. The court made a decision."
Mohammad Qasim Halimi, chief of administration for the Afghan Supreme Court, agreed.
"The court made a decision. The court decision was legal," Halimi said. "Why is he released? Why is he having press conferences? I don't know, but again I say, the court decision was legal."
On the other side of the city Wednesday, government officials held a news conference to talk about steps the government was taking to combat corruption.
Mohammad Yaseen Usmani, the top official in the Afghan government's High Office of Oversight and Anti-corruption, said four of the Karzai government's 25 ministers were behind in making financial disclosures required by law. He said that will not be allowed for incoming ministers of Karzai's new Cabinet, which is expected to be announced on Saturday. He said the new members of the Cabinet will have to complete financial disclosures before they can be approved by the parliament.
Not surprisingly, however, the anti-corruption news conference was dominated by reporters' questions about the mayor.
Usmani said the mayor's release did not violate any law.
The top U.N. official for Afghanistan did not address the mayor's case directly, but did stress that the fight against corruption in Afghanistan will be won not so much through new strategies, but through the implementation of existing law.
"The decisive element in order to fight corruption in Afghanistan is not the constant discussion of new mechanisms and new structures and new commissions," Norwegian Kai Eide told reporters. "We may need that. But structures do exist. A legal system does exist that is able, to a large extent, to address corruption."