Afghanistan’s penal code explanation revealed

KABUL’s penal code on Thursday said the explanation would help remove ambiguity in the law.

Afghanistan penal code in 916 articles was enforced in January 2018 and it contains penalty commandments not only from 1976, but from other penalty rules which were in separate forms and prepared into one code.

This penal code responds to crimes recently surfaced such as crimes of barring enforcement of justice, financial and commercial crimes, cyber crimes, environmental crimes and crimes included in the International Criminal Court.

The code was revealed during a ceremony here in Kabul today.

Abdullah Ahmadzai, head of Asia Foundation, told the ceremony that the foundation organized a number of consultative meetings between judicial and criminal organs, AGO, Ministry of Justice, Independent Afghanistan Defense Lawyers Association, university lecturers, civil society, international institutes and NGOs for coordination among them two years ago.

He said they during the meetings decided that a professional team should work on explanation of the country’s penal code.

Ahmadzai said they organized 10 workshops in different provinces of the country for removing ambiguity about the penal code and the nature of using the code, during which views of participants were collected via questionnaires for using them in explanation of the penal code.

He added explanation of the penal code was first experience of description writing of law in Afghanistan. This explanation was prepared in four volumes and completed on September 1 this year, said.

Mohammad Sarward Danish, second vice-president who was also present in the event said, “Real and effective reforms can be attained when we improve our human resources in terms of education, skills and capacity, otherwise reforms cannot come only by correcting articles.”

He said all workers of the judiciary and criminals organs should be master’s degree holders or facilitated by relevant organs to receive their master’s degrees.

The law could not be understood or enforced without explanation, interpretation and academic analysis, he said.

Explanation and interpretation of law required various types of knowledge and education, he said.

Attorney General Farid Hamidi was another speaker of the event. He said that explanation of the country’s penalty code was another step towards providing justice.

He said ambiguities in the law were resolved with the help of the penalty code explanation.

“Explanation of the penalty code would help remove misinterpretations of this law,” he said.

mds