KABUL, Dec 20: The publisher of a private Afghan weekly was taken into custody after publishing a cartoon critical of President Hamid Karzai, the detained man’s family said on Friday.

Abdul Ghafur Aiteqad, who puts out the weekly newspaper Farda, was taken into custody on Thursday at his office by two judicial officials “who explained that it was over his cartoon of Karzai”, his brother Mohammad Haroun said.

The authorities who took Aiteqad away did not have any armed guards and said they came on orders of Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, Haroun said.

The publisher was being interrogated at the prosecutor’s office, his brother said.

The offending cartoon showed Karzai playing an organ and singing, “Reconstruction, reconstruction, reconstruction,” as his finance minister accompanied him on drums.

The cartoon showed foreigners dancing around the Afghan duo waving dollars, as the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, announced on the microphone: “Soon we’ll have another ceremony at the World Bank to borrow some money — but with interest.”

The cartoon was published on Dec 15, just before Karzai left for a major donors conference in Norway, where more than 20 countries pledged two billion dollars to Afghanistan.—AFP