Afghanistan: Policewoman who killed US adviser is Iranian

Interior ministry claims Segeant Nargas, accused of killing Joseph Griffin, came from Iran 10 years ago

An Afghan official says the policewoman who killed a US consultant in Kabul is an Iranian who came to Afghanistan 10 years ago with her husband and obtained a fake ID through him. Interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said on Tuesday she had displayed "unstable behaviour" but that the investigation revealed no militants links so far. On Monday, the policewoman identified only as Sergeant Nargas shot 49-year-old Joseph Griffin, of Mansfield, Georgia, in what was the first such shooting by a woman in a spate of insider attacks by Afghans against their foreign allies. The US-based security firm DynCorp International says on its website that Griffin was a U.S. military veteran who had earlier worked with law enforcement agencies. In Kabul, he was advising the Afghan police force and was killed on Monday morning. There have been very few female combatants among insurgent ranks in conservative and male-dominated Afghanistan, although the Taliban did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack. A spokesman said the group was investigating. More than 60 soldiers and civilian advisers have been killed in 46 shootings this year, compared with 35 deaths in all of 2011. They account for nearly one in six of all Nato casualties in Afghanistan, and risk undermining the entire mission as it shifts towards a bigger focus on training. However, it was unprecedented to have a woman pulling the trigger and unusual to have an attack at such a high-level office, although two officers were shot dead in the interior ministry at the start of the year. The woman was confused and weeping, according to a police source from a gender awareness section of the interior ministry, which supervises the police. "She is crying and saying 'what have I done,'" Reuters news agency quoted the source saying.