The case of Vahidullah Khan, an Afghan soldier who died immediately after being interrogated by Czech and American special forces, finally reached trial after almost seven years. The Regional Public Prosecutor’s Office in Brno drew up an extensive indictment of four Czech soldiers suspected of, among other things, extortion, disobeying orders, and failure to provide help. However, the case was not concluded by a proper trial, but instead by presidential abolition.
In the fall of 2018, a tragic attack took place at the Shindand allied base in Afghanistan, killing Czech K9 officer Tomáš Procházka and injuring two other Czech soldiers. For reasons that remain unknown, they were attacked by Vahidullah Khan, a member of the Afghan armed forces deployed at the base alongside NATO troops. The attacker was initially suspected of having links to the Taliban, but these links were never confirmed.
Khan was detained immediately after the attack and interrogated by Afghan, Czech, and American soldiers. While no injuries were apparent after the interrogation by Afghan forces, the situation changed dramatically during the interrogation conducted by Czech soldiers. During the interrogation by Czech soldiers, screams could be heard from the interrogation room. When the interrogation was over, Khan’s face was covered in bruises. This behaviour went against explicit orders prohibiting Czech soldiers from harming Khan in any way and requiring them to take photographs as evidence after the interrogation. The prisoner was then interrogated by American troops, who, together with two Czech soldiers who were standing guard outside the interrogation room at the time, handed him over, bloodied and unconscious, to members of the Afghan army. Six hours later, Khan succumbed to his injuries.
Criminal Prosecution of Czech Soldiers
We have already covered this unfortunate series of events and its investigation by Czech and US authorities in detail several times in our Bulletin (see Bulletin October 2021 and Bulletin November 2022). However, recently, there has been a significant development in the criminal proceedings – the Regional Public Prosecutor’s Office in Brno has published an extensive indictment, provided in response to a request submitted under the Freedom of Information Act. The indictment accuses two Czech soldiers of extortion and disobeying orders, and two others of failure to provide help and breach of guard duty.
The indictment itself reveals several previously unknown details of the case and provides a vivid picture of that fateful day. For example, the prosecutor claims that after the interrogation, Czech soldiers had at least 75 minutes to provide Khan with the necessary medical help, even though they were located 300 meters from a medical facility. He also received psychological pressure from the Czech soldiers. The Americans were even more brutal – they banged Khan’s head against the table, threw him against the wall, and twisted his testicles.
In addition to the accused soldiers, the Czech state, or rather the Czech Army, was also found to have acted improperly in this case. The Czech State failed to inform the Military Police of the incident in a proper and timely manner, merely appointing a four-member investigative commission which, in its final report, repeated the statements made by the accused soldiers. The unwillingness to cooperate with the investigation also frustrated the American side, which informally threatened several times to refer the whole matter to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. However, after the commander of NATO in Europe negotiated a remedy, this did not happen.
Intervention by the President of the Republic
Assuming that the accused soldiers had confessed, the prosecutor proposed only suspended sentences due to the exceptional circumstances of the case. However, in view of the facts revealed in the published indictment, it is regrettable that even after seven years, we will not see a decision on guilt and punishment. President Petr Pavel exercised his power to halt criminal proceedings and granted the defendants abolition in mid-May.
The right to grant pardons is – despite possible justified criticism of this institution – the president’s prerogative. Apart from the prime minister’s countersignature in the aforementioned decision on abolition, the Constitution does not set any further conditions for this; it is therefore entirely up to the president and his own political responsibility to decide who to pardon. Nevertheless, doubts about the correctness and fairness of this decision cannot be avoided.
The Office of the President stated in a press release that the president in his decision took into account “in particular the exceptional nature of the war situation in which the incident under investigation occurred and the fact that the soldiers are not primarily accused of violent crimes” and “also took into account the complex international context of the whole case and the length of the investigation to date.” Some of these arguments are certainly legitimate. But was this situation really so extraordinary that it justified the absence of a proper trial? And didn’t the public deserve to have the charges decided by an independent court in a healthy constitutional state?
Translated by Kryštof Urban.
Sources
Regional Public Prosecutor’s Office in Brno. (2025). 1 KZV 27/2021 – 1019. Obžaloba. Available at https://infodeska.justice.cz/soubor.aspx?souborid=9213659.
Kundra, O. & Spurný, J. (2020, February). Kdo umučil vězně V. CH. Respekt. Retrieved from: https://www.respekt.cz/tydenik/2020/8/kdo-umucil-vezne-v-ch?srsltid=AfmBOorvtTHwuLBLJngVmBvJFP9enYe-nxaf5UqDVs_LM4DFNMqHHo2d.
Nohl, R. (2025, July). Žalobci zveřejnili obžalobu na vojáky z afghánské mise. Omilostnil je Pavel. Seznam Zprávy. Retrieved from https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/domaci-kauzy-zalobci--zverejnili-obzalobu-na-vojaky-z-afghanske-mise-omilostnil-je--pavel-282091.
Pražský hrad. (2025, May). Prezident republiky rozhodl o zastavení trestního stíhání čtyř vojáků [tisková zpráva]. Retrieved from https://www.hrad.cz/cs/pro-media/tiskove-zpravy/aktualni-tiskove-zpravy/prezident-republiky-rozhodl-o-zastaveni-trestniho-stihani-ctyr-vojaku-18591.