The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) was outraged to learn that the notorious war criminal and Vice President of Afghanistan Mohammad Qasim Fahim is currently in Germany, unchallenged by authorities. He is undergoing treatment in a Berlin hospital. "Fahim should be among the first warlords taken to trial at an international court for crimes against humanity," said Tillmann Schmalzried, one of the team of experts on Afghanistan at the STP in Göttingen.

As chief of security in the 1980s, Fahim ordered systematic torture and mass executions in Lejdey prison in the northern Afghanistan province of Takhar for members of the Afghani resistance movement led by Ahmad Shah Massoud against the Soviet occupation army. After the Soviet forces pulled out in 1992, Fahim was appointed head of the secret service for the provisional government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan. His troops perpetrated numerous human rights abuses in Kabul against the civilian population, which has gone unpunished. Furthermore, Fahim played a major role in the bloody expulsion of members of the Hazara ethnic group from the Afshar district of Kabul in early February, 1993. Thousands of Hazara were killed, and the women systematically raped.

After 2001 Fahim energetically persecuted critics of war criminals. During his time as defense minister (2002-2004) he directed the persecution of journalists critical of the government, including the employees of the Aftab newspaper ("The Sun"). Anti-warlord journalist Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, who writes for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (iwpr), had to leave Afghanistan in autumn 2009 due to massive threats against his family.

Ibrahimi's bother, Sayed Parvez, was sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy, on the basis of extorted statements and false evidence. The sentence was later commuted to a 20 years in prison.

As the strongest warlord between Badakhshan and Tajikistan, Fahim is behind the drug and weapons trade near the northern border of Afghanistan. German troops are stationed in Badakhshan. In the aftermath of an iwpr report by Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi that appeared on 30 June, 2008, the Afghan government had to promise to close down what might be the largest market worldwide for drugs and weapons, located on an island in the border river of Pandsh.

On a visit to the Afghanistan embassy in Germany on September 7, 2010, Fahim underscored his official government status. Apparently he hopes this will protect him from criminal prosecution.

Translated by Elizabeth Crawford