[Mr. Keram remains the president of the Afghanistan Football Federation, which is in charge of men’s and women’s soccer, the country’s most popular sport, although he is suspended by order of the attorney general. And FIFA, the governing body for world soccer, has just extended Mr. Keram’s ban from participating in national and international soccer for three more months, as its own investigation, nearly a year old, grinds on.]
By
Rod Nordland
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Keramuddin
Keram, president of the Afghanistan Football Federation, in Zurich
in
2014. Credit Stuart Franklin/FIFA, via Getty Images
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KABUL,
Afghanistan — He was their
nightmare, the young, female Afghan soccer players say: a menacing 57-year-old
with two wives who locked the door to his back office with a biometric keypad
that only he could open.
Many of those young soccer players, members
of the women’s national team, lined up to accuse the man, the president of
Afghan soccer, Keramuddin Keram, of sexually assaulting them in a bed he kept
in that room, and elsewhere, charges they made both in public statements and to
Afghan prosecutors. Women who rebuffed his advances were labeled lesbians and
expelled from the team, according to eight former players who said that had
happened to them.
Three months later, however, the
investigation into sexual abuse in Afghan soccer is stalled, amid fears it will
never proceed. It has yet to result in any criminal charges.
One of Mr. Keram’s accusers, the soccer
player Khalida Popal, said he had actively pursued women who testified against
him in Afghanistan, warning them to withdraw the charges. And witnesses like
her who live in exile have not been interviewed in person by Afghan
investigators, as required by law, because so far the investigators have not
been able to get visas.
Mr. Keram remains the president of the
Afghanistan Football Federation, which is in charge of men’s and women’s
soccer, the country’s most popular sport, although he is suspended by order of
the attorney general. And FIFA, the governing body for world soccer, has just
extended Mr. Keram’s ban from participating in national and international
soccer for three more months, as its own investigation, nearly a year old,
grinds on.
Neither FIFA nor Mr. Keram responded to
requests for comment.
Despite public support from President Ashraf
Ghani, the Afghan investigation has run into a powerful lobby made up of
supporters of Mr. Keram from Panjshir, a politically dominant province in
northern Afghanistan. Once a local warlord and later governor of the province,
Mr. Keram remains well connected with the Jamiat-i-Islami party, the major
political force in the north.
Prosecutors have the power to arrest Mr.
Keram but have not done so, though they have blocked him from leaving the
country. “If the investigative committee thinks they need to arrest him, they
will do so,” said Jamshid Rasooli, the attorney general’s spokesman.
Mr. Rasooli confirmed a report by ToloNews,
an Afghan television news program, that two of the attorney general’s
investigators had not yet obtained visas to interview witnesses in Europe,
which has led to speculation that the visas were denied for fear that the
investigators would claim asylum themselves. He said they had been waiting for
the visas for more than a month.
Ms. Popal, 31, reached by telephone in
Denmark, said she had heard from at least three soccer players in the past two
months who withdrew their charges against Mr. Keram after they received direct,
personal threats from him.
Two of the women answered calls from someone
they knew, who then handed the phone to Mr. Keram. In the third case, the woman
was walking to soccer practice in Kabul near the football federation offices
when she was forced into a car with blacked-out windows, finding Mr. Keram
inside, Ms. Popal was told.
“He told them, ‘I know you have been to the
attorney general’s office and given testimony against us,’ ” Ms. Popal said. “
‘Go and take back the testimony. You know I am a powerful person. Nobody will
put me in jail. I will win this case. It’ll take some time, but then what will
happen to you? Think about your future and what will happen to you and your
family.’ ”
Ms. Popal said the three women, whom she
declined to identify for their safety, had gone into hiding and were no longer
willing to testify against Mr. Keram.
Mr. Keram did not respond to repeated efforts
to contact him for comment. A spokesman for the Afghan federation, Shafi
Shadab, who had earlier spoken on behalf of Mr. Keram, said Saturday that the
attorney general had ordered him to have no further contact with the soccer
chief. The federation’s Facebook page has posted a statement denying all of the
charges.
Ms. Popal was one of the founders of women’s
soccer in Afghanistan and remained active with the team after fleeing to
Denmark, where she claimed asylum in 2011. She accused Mr. Keram of the rape
and sexual assault of other players and claimed to have evidence that she had
reported those claims to the federation early last year with no response.
“The president of A.F.F. and some trainers
are raping and sexually harassing female players,” she said in a December
interview. She earlier made similar claims in an interview with The Guardian.
In addition to Mr. Keram, four other members
of the federation were suspended and banned from travel. The ban on one of
them, the federation’s deputy president, Yosuf Kargar, was lifted in January
after the attorney general’s office said it had found no evidence against him.
Mr. Keram appealed his suspension by FIFA but
was denied.
Earlier, the sponsor of the Afghan national
women’s team, the Danish sportswear manufacturer Hummel, withdrew its financial
support over what it called “strong allegations of severe mental, physical,
sexual and equal rights abuse of the female players by male A.F.F. officials.”
Last month, Kelly Lindsey, the American coach
of the Afghan women’s team, urged FIFA to step in and take more concrete
action. It could, for instance, ban the Afghan teams from competition.
“I think FIFA really needs to stand up here.
They are the governing body of football and if they allow this to happen in
their culture, then it’s easy for it to be pushed under the rug,” she said in
an interview with Reuters.
FIFA has defended its actions, noting that it
suspended Mr. Keram and is investigating the allegations. It added that it had
“zero tolerance” for sexual abuse. Last week, FIFA said the head of its
investigation had requested that Mr. Keram’s ban be extended for 90 days, and
that the organization had agreed.
“During this time, Mr. Karim will continue to
be banned from all football-related activities at both national and international
level,” it said, using an alternative transliteration of Mr. Keram’s name.
Human Rights Watch weighed in last month,
urging both FIFA and the Afghan authorities to move more decisively on their
investigations. “FIFA, which said it began investigating these allegations last
April, should share information with Afghan investigators and maintain a ban on
accused officials,” the rights group said.
Mr. Rasooli said the Afghan attorney general
was determined to fully pursue the case against Mr. Keram and the others
accused. They have not been arrested, he said, because under Afghan law that
would limit the time the authorities had to conduct their investigation.
“This is a complicated case,” he said. “We
have interviewed 30 witnesses inside Afghanistan and that part of the case is
almost completed.”
He added that the authorities still hoped to
obtain European visas for investigators.
Ms. Popal said she was still hopeful that the
investigation of Mr. Keram and his colleagues would succeed.
“I really respect and trust the committee in
the attorney general’s office working on this case,” she said. “At the same
time, I don’t know how powerful they are once the case is out of their hands.
And he is a powerful guy, with so much influence inside the government.”
Correction: March 18, 2019
An earlier version of this article described
incorrectly a report by the Afghan program ToloNews about European visa
applications by two government investigators. The report said they had not yet
obtained the visas, not that the visas had been denied.
Follow Rod Nordland on Twitter: @rodnordland.
Fahim Abed contributed reporting.
