8 Subh, Kabul: The Ministry of Interior announced that three people were arrested in connection with the assassination of Yusuf Rashid, head of the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA). Amrullah Saleh, the first vice president, said that the three men were directly involved in the assassination.
Tariq Arian, the Interior Ministry spokesperson, told 8 Subh on Saturday, January 9, that other people were also being investigated in connection with Yusuf Rashid’s killing, and that the case is still under investigation.
The first vice president had earlier written in a Facebook post that three people directly involved in the assassination of Yusuf Rashid had been identified, of which two had been arrested.
Saleh added, “One of the killers posed as a student and became a classmate of Yusuf Khan’s son in order to complete the assassination. The terrorists belong to a small group of the Taliban operating in Logar under the name of Muslimyar. When we saw the confessions of the murderers, I said to myself, “My God, how were these handful of people, with no sense of humanity and Satan-like in appearance, able to take on one of our personalities?”
The first vice president expressed the hope that the killers would be executed after the investigation was completed. According to Amrullah Saleh, the people accused of killing Yusuf Rashid were arrested in Kabul’s Seventh District. He expressed his thanks to the police officers of this district.
The first vice president further wrote: “The Taliban’s moral compass, if it ever had one, must have crumbled and rotted going by the murders of our country’s civil activists. This kind of moral compass cannot be restored. Unjustly shed blood always bring disgrace to the murderer in this world and punishment in the Hereafter.”
Yusuf Rashid, Executive Director of FEFA, was attacked by unidentified gunmen in the seventh district of Kabul in the attack on December 23 last year. He was wounded in the attack, but died in hospital.
He was scheduled to attend a meeting on the same day on “How Civil Society Can Monitor the Peace Process.” Mr. Rashid was one of the founders of the FEFA and worked for about two decades for free elections and a democratic society.
No individual or group claimed responsibility for his assassination, and the Taliban had denied involvement in the incident.
