Afghanistan Times
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Abdul Zuhoor Qayomi-KABUL: The acting chief of the Attorney General Office (AGO) on Monday told lawmakers that following orders of President Ashraf Ghani, the AGO has assessed professional skills of the attorneys but none lost job.
Summoned by the Wolesi Jirga (WJ) or Lower House of the parliament over reports about sacking of attorneys, Noorul Habib Jalal said that no decision has been taken regarding fate of the lawyers working in the AGO.
He termed the reports baseless and said the prosecutors were not fired because they were experienced and working with the AGO for the past 10 to 30 years.
According to the reports, the legal advisor to the president Amen Ahmadi has fired many prosecutors to accommodate his relatives in the AGO under the pretext of reforms.
Rejecting the allegations, Jalal said the assessment process was carried out as the president ordered the office to do so. He said the legal advisor has no role in this regard. “Ahmadi hasn’t hired any of his relatives in the Attorney General Office. Ninety-nine percent of the prosecutors were successful during the assessment process, conducted by the presidential palace. The process was monitored by representatives of the lawyers’ association,” the acting chief of AGO said.
He told the MPs that there are 140 attorneys in the AGO’s central office and 465 others in the provinces who are 12th grade pass, while 68 prosecutors are BA passed but studied different subjects. He said that they all were experienced attorneys now and able to perform their duties efficiently.
Jalal assured that educated and talented people, graduates of the faculty of law and political science as well as the faculty of Sharia, would be hired to replaced the corrupted staffers of the AGO in near future in order to enhance capacity of the judicial bodies.
The AGO has arrested 13 corrupt employees including six prosecutors and were sacked. They were accused of bribery, he said.
The MPs welcomed the reforms and said that reforms should not violate laws and had to be transparent and legal.
Gulalai Noor Safi, a female MP, said that there are corrupt prosecutors in the AGO as the human resource department had asked $4,000 as bribe from an applicant who was seeking job and was recent graduate of the Faculty of Law and Political Science.
She said the AGO had to be corruption free and follow the constitution and laws of the land in letter and spirit.
