The former head of the prisons regulatory authority, Ahmad Rashid Totakhil, has been referred to the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) and has been banned from traveling abroad and the institution has been led by its deputy for the last two weeks, according to sources.

Sources said that Mr. Totakhil did not appear at the Attorney General’s Office so his arrest warrant was issued by the AGO.
 
But his colleagues said Totakhil has resigned from his post.

“Mr. Totakhil is not here,” the deputy head of the authority Nizamuddin Nuristani said at a press conference, referring to Totakhil’s absence. “His resignation has been approved by the president.”

“The head of the prisons regulatory authority has been referred to the Attorney General’s Office and the issue is under the AGO’s scrutiny,” AGO spokesman Jamshid Rasuli said.

Meanwhile, the deputy head of the authority talked about existing problems in the institution, saying that the prisons in the country meet required standards but phones and drugs are still smuggled inside by prisoners.

At least 30,000 prisoners are kept in the country’s prisons, he said.

The authority was changed into an independent institution a year ago.

“I am not rejecting this. Unfortunately, phones exist in detention centers,” Nuristani said.

“At least 400 military prisoners have benefited from presidential decrees so far,” said Farhad Bayani, head of the office of the prison authority.

Officials said that foreign nationals are also among the prisoners, but they did not provide figures about prisoners who have been sentenced with the death penalty, especially Taliban inmates.

“29,248 individuals are imprisoned, of which 16,440 are men,” Nuristani said.

The authority has been turned into an independent institution, but the Bagram prison and other jails are still under the monitoring and leadership of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior Affairs and the National Directorate of Security.