Abdullah Shah was a militia commander in Afghanistan's civil war of the 1990s. In 2002, in what Tate later described as the first capital trial in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, a special court in Kabul convicted him of multiple murders. The U.S. State Department's human rights report for that year described the offense as mass murder. Afghan officials said the killings included travelers on the main road from Kabul to Jalalabad and members of his own family, among them one of his wives and his infant daughter. He was sentenced to death and, on April 20, 2004, he was shot in a prison outside Kabul. It was the first execution carried out by the Afghan state after the Taliban government fell at the end of 2001.
The case is remembered for two reasons that pull in different directions. To many Afghans who gave evidence, it was a rare moment when a commander from the civil war years answered for what he had done. To human rights organizations, it was a trial that fell well short of basic standards, followed by an execution carried out in secret, at a time when Shah was said to hold information about other commanders who were by then in positions of power. Behind both stands the nickname by which he was known, "Zardad's Dog," which ties him to his former commander, Faryadi Sarwar Zardad, whose own trial in London in 2005 became a landmark in international law.
Abdullah Shah's story begins in the years after 1992, when the Soviet-backed government of Mohammad Najibullah collapsed and the mujahideen factions that had fought it turned on one another for control of Kabul. Eurasianet, writing in 2005, dates that civil war from the collapse of the Najibullah government in 1992 to the Taliban's capture of most of the country in 1996.
Amnesty International described Shah as a military commander in the civil war of 1992 to 1994. When he was sentenced in 2002, officials told Voice of America that he had been a commander in the Hezb-i-Islami faction during the 1990s. Hezb-i-Islami was the party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahideen leader who became prime minister during the civil war, according to a Reuters report of 2005.
Shah served under Faryadi Sarwar Zardad, also known as Zardad Khan. Reuters described Zardad as the leader of a private army that controlled an area of about 80 kilometers east of Kabul between 1991 and 1996, including a main highway from Pakistan to the capital. Eurasianet said Zardad commanded several checkpoints on the main road between Kabul and Jalalabad from 1992 to 1996. The Afghanistan Analysts Network, in a 2016 account by Kate Clark, wrote that in the mid-1990s Zardad held a base at Sarobi on that road, where his men preyed on people fleeing Kabul and on traders bringing supplies into the city. Zardad was later convicted in London of conspiracy to torture and conspiracy to take hostages; Reuters reported in 2005 that he and his men had robbed, beaten and murdered travelers at the checkpoints and at a nearby prison, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty described the crimes as part of an extortion ring he led.
According to Afghan officials quoted by Voice of America in October 2002, Shah ran a checkpoint on the main highway between Kabul and Jalalabad, where he set a toll and killed travelers who refused to pay it. The officials said he had killed at least nine people.
The State Department's report on Afghanistan for 2002 recorded a further killing for which, it said, he was convicted: the deaths of 50 Hazaras during the hijacking of a bus. The report does not give the date of that event or say more about it.
The killings that drew most attention when he was executed were those within his own household. Afghan officials, in an Associated Press report of April 2004, said Shah had been convicted of killing one of his wives and his infant daughter. A Reuters report the same week said he had been convicted of murdering dozens of people, including four of his wives, and that his own confessions had incriminated him. A press release issued by Tate in London in 2005 stated that he is said to have killed three of his wives and five of his children. The numbers differ from one account to another.
He was first tried in September 2002. The State Department's human rights report for 2002 says that a closed court convicted him that month of mass murder, including the bus hijacking. Amnesty International later described the tribunal as a special court that sat in closed session and denied him basic defense rights: he had no lawyer, and he was not able to cross-examine the witnesses against him.
Before his appeal was heard, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Fazl Shinwari, said publicly that Shah should receive the death sentence. The State Department recorded the statement in its 2002 report, in the section on the denial of fair public trial.
The appeal, or retrial, was heard in Kabul in October 2002. It ended with a sentence of death. Voice of America reported on October 16, 2002 that a Kabul court had sentenced Shah to death, and that if the sentence stood it would be the first official execution in Afghanistan since the Taliban government fell. The State Department wrote that the death sentence came at the end of his appeal and that he had no legal representation during it.
The hearing was watched by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, who was then on a mission to Afghanistan. Amnesty International later recorded that the Special Rapporteur observed the trial and afterward expressed concern that the international safeguards for the use of capital punishment "cannot be observed at this stage" in Afghanistan.
The hearing was also filmed. The British artists Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell, who had been commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London to respond to the war in Afghanistan, spent two weeks in the country in 2002 and were given permission to attend the Supreme Court in Kabul and film a trial. The trial they filmed was Shah's. Tate described it as the first capital trial since the fall of the Taliban and the footage as showing a crowded, shabby courtroom with armed guards, with the proceedings in Afghan languages and only basic explanation. The Imperial War Museum's catalogue says the artists felt that the people in the case and the line of witnesses stood for the struggle of the Afghan people to come to terms with the devastation of the previous 23 years.
Every human rights account of the case raises the same points. In Amnesty International's words in 2006, Shah was tried by a special court that denied him basic defense rights. He had no legal counsel. He could not cross-examine witnesses. The court did not investigate his claims that he had been tortured, even though, Amnesty said, his injuries were visible, and the trial was not open to the public. Amnesty also said that senior figures, including his former commander, pressed the judiciary for his execution, and that this commander was never called to give evidence.
The State Department made similar points in general terms. Its 2002 and 2004 reports said that Afghan court procedures did not meet international fair trial standards, that defendants generally had no right to an attorney and no means of confronting or questioning witnesses, and that there was no working public defender system.
These criticisms concern how the court reached its verdict and whether a death sentence should have been imposed after proceedings of that kind.
The sentence then waited on President Karzai. The State Department's report for 2003 noted that there had been no developments in Shah's case during that year, and repeated that he had no legal representation during his appeal.
Reuters reported in April 2004 that Karzai had at first asked the Supreme Court to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. His spokesman, Jawed Ludin, told the Associated Press that the president had commuted two earlier death sentences and that he signed Shah's death warrant reluctantly. Ludin said the nature of the crimes had left him no choice.
Abdullah Shah was shot in the head on April 20, 2004, at a prison outside Kabul, according to Afghan officials quoted by the Associated Press. Reuters reported that the execution was carried out with a single bullet and had been personally approved by Karzai. The State Department's report for 2004 gives the same date.
The government did not announce the execution. It stayed secret for a week, until Amnesty International disclosed it in a statement that the Associated Press called scathing. Officials then confirmed it, and Associated Press and Reuters reports appeared in newspapers on April 28, 2004. Democracy Now, reporting the news on April 27, said it was the first state execution in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban more than two years earlier.
Amnesty International's statement went further than the question of the trial. As reported by the Associated Press and Democracy Now, Amnesty said Shah had been denied basic standards of fairness and voiced the fear that he may have been executed to silence a key witness to human rights abuses by several commanders who were now in power. Amnesty urged Afghanistan to abolish the death penalty. The State Department's 2004 report recorded the same concern from human rights groups, who regarded his trial and appeal as seriously flawed and said he was a material witness to abuses by other prominent Afghans, including some members of the government.
For more than three years after Shah's death, Afghanistan carried out no further known executions. On October 7, 2007, the government executed 15 prisoners. Amnesty International said in a statement that the last execution before them had been Shah's, in April 2004, and that the 2007 executions ended a moratorium of three years. Al Jazeera, reporting from Kabul on October 8, 2007, likewise described Shah's execution as the last known one carried out by Karzai's government, and said he had been convicted of a spate of killings. Agence France Presse, in reports printed in The Daily Star of Bangladesh and Arab News, quoted a Supreme Court spokesman, Wakil Omari, as saying that others might have been executed in secret in the meantime, though he had no details.
Shah's nickname comes from his commander. The Imperial War Museum's catalogue entry on the Langlands and Bell film states that it was alleged that Zardad kept Shah as a "human dog" and used him to attack captives. Tate's press release of 2005 gives the same explanation for the nickname. These are allegations; Shah was never charged with these acts.
They were heard in court in London. Zardad had fled Afghanistan after Hezb-i-Islami's positions fell to the Taliban, and in 1998 he reached Britain on a false passport and claimed asylum. He later ran a pizza business in south London. A BBC team traced him in 2000, and he was arrested and charged. He was charged with conspiracy to torture and conspiracy to take hostages in Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996, under Britain's obligations as a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, led the prosecution, according to the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
At Zardad's trial at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, the court heard that he and his men had kept a "human dog" to attack captives, in Tate's summary. Reuters reported that the man was said to be Abdullah Shah, and called this the most striking evidence in the case. In its 2016 account, the Afghanistan Analysts Network also described the "human dog" allegation, without naming him.
The first jury, in 2004, could not reach a verdict. A retrial began on June 8, 2005, according to the International Crimes Database of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut. On July 18, 2005, the jury found Zardad guilty of both counts, and the next day he was sentenced to 20 years in prison on each, to run concurrently, with a recommendation that he be deported once he had served his sentence. Afghan witnesses gave evidence anonymously by satellite link, several of them from the British Embassy in Afghanistan, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Eurasianet; the Afghanistan Analysts Network counted 16 Afghans who testified, most of them by video link. The prosecutor, James Lewis, said it was the first time torture and hostage taking had been prosecuted in such circumstances in any country. The Court of Appeal dismissed Zardad's appeal in February 2007.
Zardad maintained that he had not kidnapped or tortured anyone, according to JURIST, and his lawyers argued that he had ordered his men not to torture captives. In December 2016, after serving just over half of his sentence, he was released and deported to Kabul, where supporters put up banners at the airport calling him a hero, the Afghanistan Analysts Network reported. The network quoted the Human Rights Watch researcher Patricia Gossman as saying that Britain had betrayed Zardad's victims by releasing him without regard to the security of witnesses.
The two cases ran in opposite directions. Shah was tried in Kabul without a lawyer and executed. Zardad was tried in London, in a case Eurasianet said set a precedent for universal jurisdiction, and was later released and sent home. Reuters reported in 2005 that British police had met Shah before he was executed.
Langlands and Bell edited their October 2002 footage into a 12 minute film, Zardad's Dog, completed in 2003. It was first shown at the Imperial War Museum in the exhibition The House of Osama bin Laden, from April 10 to May 26, 2003, and the artists were nominated for the 2004 Turner Prize for that work.
In October 2004, a few days before the Turner Prize exhibition opened at Tate Britain, Tate and the artists were advised that showing the film while Zardad's trial was under way in London could amount to contempt of court. It was withdrawn. After Zardad's conviction, Tate showed the film in the Lightbox space at Tate Britain from October 3 to November 3, 2005. The Imperial War Museum holds it in its art collection.
How many people he killed. Reported figures differ, and none is an official count. Officials quoted by Voice of America in 2002 said he killed at least nine people. The State Department's report for 2002 says his conviction included the deaths of 50 Hazaras in a bus hijacking. Reuters, in April 2004, said he was convicted of murdering dozens of people, including four of his wives. Tate's press release says he is said to have killed three of his wives and five of his children.
His faction. Officials described him in 2002 as a Hezb-i-Islami commander, and he served under Zardad, whom Reuters and Eurasianet place in Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami.
The "human dog" evidence. The allegation that Zardad kept Shah to attack captives was made by witnesses at Zardad's trial in London. Reuters said the man was "said to be" Shah. Shah was never charged with these acts and never answered them in court.
The key-witness concern. Amnesty International's fear that Shah was executed to silence him as a witness against powerful commanders is a concern raised by the organization and repeated by other human rights groups, according to the State Department.
Torture. Amnesty International said Shah claimed he had been tortured and that the court did not investigate the claim even though his injuries were visible. No court ruled on the claim.
1992: The Najibullah government collapses; civil war between mujahideen factions begins.
1992 to 1996: Zardad's forces control checkpoints on the Kabul to Jalalabad road, according to his London trial; Shah serves under him.
1996: The Taliban take control of most of Afghanistan.
1998: Zardad arrives in Britain on a false passport and claims asylum.
Late 2001: The Taliban government falls.
September 2002: A closed special court convicts Shah of mass murder (State Department).
October 2002: At an appeal hearing in Kabul, observed by the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions and filmed by Langlands and Bell, Shah is sentenced to death. Voice of America reports the sentence on October 16.
2003: No developments in the case (State Department).
April 10 to May 26, 2003: The film is first shown at the Imperial War Museum, London.
2004: Zardad's first trial in London ends without a verdict.
April 20, 2004: Shah is executed by shooting at a prison outside Kabul, after Karzai signs the death warrant.
Late April 2004: Amnesty International discloses the execution.
April 27 and 28, 2004: Afghan officials confirm the execution, and news agency reports are published.
October 2004: The film is withdrawn from the Turner Prize exhibition on legal advice.
June 8, 2005: Zardad's retrial begins at the Old Bailey.
July 18 and 19, 2005: Zardad is convicted of conspiracy to torture and conspiracy to take hostages and sentenced to 20 years.
October 3 to November 3, 2005: Tate Britain shows the film.
February 2007: The Court of Appeal dismisses Zardad's appeal.
October 7, 2007: Afghanistan executes 15 prisoners, the first known executions since Shah's.
December 2016: Zardad is released and deported to Kabul.