Afghanistan's Interior Ministry is investigating the killing of an 18 year-old cousin of President Hamid Karzai, allegedly bloody revenge for the death of another relative 30 years earlier, the Afghan leader said on Tuesday. Waheed Karzai was shot in front of his 12-year old sister in October, the New York Times reported earlier this week, quoting family members who said the hitman was a distant relative taking revenge for the "honour killing" of his father decades earlier.
The president's powerful relatives are protecting the killer, the report said. The internecine feud could cast a shadow over Karzai's promise to clean up the corrupt government, spurred on by complaints from Western countries that provide the cash and troops that keep him in power.
President Karzai confirmed that a young man had died, and said an old family feud could have been involved in the shooting, but he said the Ministry of the Interior was investigating and warned against jumping to conclusions. "There was an unfortunate incident about 30 years ago, when we were refugees in Pakistan in the time of Jihad, I guess of the Soviets, my uncle was killed in the house of that member of the family," Karzai told a news conference in the Afghan capital.
"Now some months ago, a young son, an 18 year-old son of that family was killed in our village in Karz, so because of that history, naturally attention would come to that other cousin." Relatives from both sides of the family have been in touch with him about the case, President Karzai said, one side accusing his cousin of the murder and the other side defending him, but added that he is waiting for the result of the investigation.
The man who has been accused by the dead teenager's relatives is Karzai's cousin, son of the uncle killed three decades earlier. He moved to the United States after his father's death but has returned to his homeland and amassed wealth and power in the security business, the New York Times said. His father was allegedly murdered because he allowed his sister to break off an engagement with Waheed Karzai's father, made when the two were young children. The cousin himself denies the murder.