Afghanistan to Investigate Vice President on Charges of Assaulting a Rival

KABUL, Afghanistan — The office of Afghanistan’s attorney general said on Saturday that it had opened an investigation into allegations that the country’s vice president had tortured and sexually abused a political rival.

The vice president, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was accused of abducting his rival, Ahmad Ishchi, 63, during a traditional sports event last month. Mr. Ishchi says he was repeatedly beaten and then penetrated with the tip of an AK-47 rifle.

“The investigation will be carried out neutrally and independently,” the office of Attorney General Mohammad Farid Hamidi said in a statement.

Afghan prosecutors are piecing together evidence, including information from the Ishchi family and medical records. Mr. Ishchi has gone through at least two medical examinations since his release earlier this month, one in Kabul and another at the American air base in Bagram.

It was unclear whether General Dostum would cooperate with the investigation. The vice president remains in his home province of Jowzjan, where he has been meeting with supporters and elders.

Bashir Ahmad Tayanj, a spokesman for General Dostum, said a group of elders from Jowzjan had arrived in Kabul to talk to Mr. Ishchi and resolve the issue through traditional means rather than through the courts.

There is “no way whatsoever for Vice President Dostum, who became vice president by the people’s vote, to step down over this misery and thoroughly false and made-up claim, or to be questioned by anyone,” Mr. Tayanj said.

General Dostum, a former warlord, has been accused of human rights abuses in the past. Nevertheless, President Ashraf Ghani, a Western-educated technocrat, made him a partner in the administration because of the general’s influence over the country’s Uzbek constituency.

General Dostum’s increasingly erratic behavior has concerned Western and Afghan officials.

On Saturday, P. Michael McKinley, the departing United States ambassador to Afghanistan, joined the chorus of officials calling for a transparent investigation into the accusations lodged by Mr. Ishchi.

“Investigations and transparency are important to send the right signal to the Afghan people that no one is above the law,” Mr. McKinley told ToloNews, a television network in Kabul.