6 govt servants sentenced to 13 years imprisonment

An appellant court in central Uruzgan province has sentenced six employees of different government departments to 13 years imprisonment in connection with bribery.

Attaullah Atta, director of courts, said the seven employees had been arrested by National Directorate of Security (NDS) red-handed on bribe charges.

He said they were employees of the governor’s office, custom, police headquarters and women’s affairs department.

Atta said the case of the government official had referred to city court, which had sentenced them to one year and one month in prison on the basis of documents and evidence.

According to him, six of the seven had accepted the court’s decision, but one had appealed.

He said the city court had upheld the verdict in a public court today.

The director of the appellant court said he had acquitted the governor house employee because he had cooperated with security and intelligence agencies in the case.

The detainees had their lawyers were satisfied with the court’s decision, but complained that they had been mistreated in the detention center at the time of their arrest and that illegal documents had been signed.

Jameel-ur-Rehman, the lawyer, told the court that they had not only signed illegal documents in the NDS observation room, but had also been beaten and threatened to death.