KABUL, Feb 15: Senior security officials of the Afghan interim administration assassinated aviation and tourism minister Abdul Rahman, interim leader Hamid Karzai said late on Friday.
In a statement read out on his behalf by Culture Minister Sayed Raheem, Karzai said four people had been arrested, among them two generals.
Another three had escaped to Saudi Arabia with Afghan Haj pilgrims, he said, adding the Saudi authorities had been asked to repatriate the fugitives.
Karzai said the killing had been carried out “for personal reasons”.
Speaking after the statement had been read, Karzai told reporters that the case against those arrested was based on “absolute, multiple eyewitness accounts”.
The killings “had nothing to do with the hajis,” Karzai said.
Earlier officials had said Rahman was beaten to death by furious pilgrims who had waited more than two days for a flight to Makkah.
Gulbuddin, the secretary to Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, earlier said the interim government had obtained a video of the scene filmed by a journalist.
Rahman was killed by a mob late on Thursday as he was about to leave for New Delhi on a plane owned by state carrier Ariana.
“This upset some people who obviously thought that they deserved some priority. And the fact that the minister was on board led to outrage and rising emotion. Tension had been rising over the past 48 hours,” a foreign ministry spokesman said earlier.
The pilgrims stormed the plane by entering the cockpit with a ladder and sought out the minister, the spokesman alleged, adding Rahman may have been hurled out of the plane.
Some of the pilgrims have been interrogated, officials said.
Before killing Rahman the mob had set upon Ariana International Airlines’ chief Ruhullah Aman, who was still in hospital on Friday, the official said.
Aman was rescued by members of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, which has a base at the airport’s military section.
Following the lynching, a convoy of armoured ISAF vehicles was stationed on the tarmac on the civilian side.
Gulbuddin alleged the killing was the work of the Al Qaeda network.—AFP
