Hamid Karzai's brother killed in Afghanistan
10:34AM Tue 12 Jul, 2011
Ahmad Wali Karzai, a brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and one of the most powerful men in southern Afghanistan, was killed on Tuesday, an official and a family member confirmed.
"I confirm that Ahmad Wali was killed inside his house," said Zalmay Ayoubi, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province, where Ahmad Wali Karzai lived and was head of the provincial council.
A cousin of Ahmad Wali Karzai, who asked not to be named, also confirmed to Reuters that he had been killed.
A family friend, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Karzai had been killed by a bodyguard while entertaining guests at home.
The Taliban immediately claimed responsibility for the assassination as one of its "biggest achievements".
The assassination comes as Afghan President Hamid Karzai was to hold talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan where he announced that Paris would recall 1,000 soldiers by the end of next year.
Wali Karzai, 50, head of Kandahar's provincial council, was long a deeply controversial figure in Afghanistan, dogged by allegations of unsavoury links to Afghanistan's lucrative opium trade and private security firms.
American documents leaked by Internet whistleblower WikiLeaks late last year also painted him as a corrupt drugs baron, but Western officials always kept quiet in public on the president's younger half brother's tainted record.
Wali Karzai has been the reported target of multiple assassination attempts.
In May 2009, his motorcade was ambushed by insurgents firing rockets and machine guns in eastern Nangarhar province. One of his bodyguards was killed, but he was not harmed.
That attack came less than two months after four Taliban suicide bombers stormed Kandahar's provincial council office, killing 13 people in an assault that Ahmed Wali Karzai said was aimed at him. A Taliban spokesman said the attack targeted the general compound. The president's half brother had left the building a few minutes before that attack.
- The Telegraph
Photos
