Facts
During the Soviet-Afghan war, the Pul-e-Charki prison in Kabul was reportedly notorious for its inhumane regime, with political prisoners being kept for years in detention without a trial and without informing them of the charges against them, tortured, subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment and executed. From 1983 to 1988, Abdul Razaq Arif worked in a supervisory role at the Pul-e-Charki prison.
Razaq Arif arrived in the Netherlands in 2001 and later obtained Dutch nationality.
Procedure
In 2012, the Dutch police opened an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan by perpetrators now living in the Netherlands. This included Razaq Arif’s involvement in Pul-e-Charki in Afghanistan. On 12 November 2019, the Dutch police arrested Razaq Arif on suspicion of war crimes.
In 2020, the prosecutors gathered statements from victims and former employees in the Afghan communist government, demonstrating that the suspect worked in three different positions at the Pul-e-Charki prison.
On 14 April 2022, The Hague District Court established that Abdul Razaq Arif had worked in a supervisory role in the Pul-e-Charki prison from 1983 to 1988 and was responsible for the detention conditions and the order of Blocks 1, 2 and 3 of the prison, where political prisoners and detainees were held. As such, he was found guilty of the war crimes of arbitrary detention, cruel and inhuman treatment and assault on the personal dignity of at least 18 individual political prisoners committed between 1983 and 1987. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, almost 40 years after the facts, with the Court considering that “the passage of time does not constitute a reason for a reduced sentence.”
Both Razaq Arif and the prosecution have appealed the decision.
On 12 June 2024, the Court of Appeal overturned Arif’s conviction. The judges ruled in his favor based on the legal interpretation of the crimes in question, in particular whether these acts qualified as war crimes. The court accepted the defense’s argument that the detention of political prisoners in Pul-e Charkhi may not have been linked to the conflict, ruling that the offenses could not therefore be classified as war crimes.
On 7 July 2024, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service announced it would challenge Arif’s acquittal before the Supreme Court. The appeal specifically contests the Court of Appeal’s finding that no link existed between the inhuman acts for which Arif had been convicted by The Hague District Court and the armed conflict.
On 20 May 2025, the Supreme Court declared the Public Prosecution Service inadmissible in the prosecution, because Abdul Razaq Arif has since died.