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Afghanistan

Top Afghan election officials arrested, Karzai calls for calm

As Afghan prosecutors arrested top election officials for fraud, President Hamid Karzai on Thursday called on losing candidates in September's parliamentary poll to avoid violence and to lodge complaints with the judiciary, as angry protests took place across the country.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a conference in Kabul
Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a conference in Kabul Reuters
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Earlier top Afghan prosecutors said they had arrested senior election officials and opened new criminal investigations into vote fraud.

They declared the Independent Election Commission’s announcement of final results on Wednesday “premature".

Mohammad Ishaq Alko, the country's leading prosecutor, said he had evidence that election workers were involved in fraud during September’s vote.

President Hamid Karzai's support in the new parliament appears to have weakened, while his main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, claims that his supporters have won more than 90 seats in the 249-member chamber.

Investigations into massive fraud previously cancelled a quarter of the 5.6 million votes cast.

We have evidence that people's votes were traded in Kabul and Dubai," Alko told Radio Azadi, a Kabul-based news station also known as Radio Free Europe.

He said eight people have been arrested.

The prosecutor's deputy, Rahmatullah Nazari, told the AFP news agency that four people, two of them senior election officers, have been arrested and a hunt for a UN-affiliated election official has been launched.

"They're big, they're in decision-making positions," Nazari said in reference to the two election workers. The other two were money dealers involved in vote fraud, he said.

He accused the election body of not cooperating with his investigators "because they have committed massive fraud and they don't want this to be revealed".

In the western city of Herat, about 500 people supporting a disqualified candidate demonstrated, shouting slogans against the election commission.

In northern Samangan province, hundreds of men blocked a highway protesting another ruling, local police said.

Leading Afghan election watchdog Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (Fefa), said the ballot was "full of flaws".
 

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