Afghanistan: Repeal Amnesty Law

The Afghan government should urgently act to repeal a law that provides an amnesty to perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch has said.

The National Stability and Reconciliation Law was passed by parliament in 2007 by a coalition of powerful warlords and their supporters to prevent the prosecution of individuals responsible for large-scale human rights abuses in the preceding decades. The amnesty law states that all those who were engaged in armed conflict before the formation of the Interim Administration in Afghanistan in December 2001 shall "enjoy all their legal rights and shall not be prosecuted."

Three decades of war have brought serious human rights abuses against all the major ethnic and political groups in Afghanistan, including large-scale atrocities during armed conflict, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, and sexual crimes as a weapon of war. Human Rights Watch documented one particularly grisly period in 1992-93 in "Blood Stained Hands: Past Atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan's Legacy of Impunity."

(Source Afghanistan: Repeal Amnesty Law Human Rights Watch)