Former Afghan interim president Mujaddedi passes away

KABUL: Former Afghan interim president and ex-Jihadi leader Sibghatullah Mujaddedi has died, his son confirmed to Afghan media.

Sibghatullah Mujaddedi was born on 21 April 1925. He served as president after the fall of Mohammad Najibullah’s government in April 1992. He was the founder of the Afghan National Liberation Front and served as the chairman of the 2003 Loya Jirga, the Grand Assembly, that approved Afghanistan’s new Constitution after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

In 2005, he was appointed chairman of the Meshrano Jirga, the Upper House of Parliament, and was reappointed as a member in 2011. He also served on the Afghan High Peace Council. Mujaddedi was considered a moderate Muslim leader. Mojaddedi studied Islamic Law and Jurisprudence at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.

In 1952 he returned to Afghanistan to teach in schools and at Kabul University, where he became known as an advocate of Afghan independence. In 1959 he was accused of conspiring against then Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev and was imprisoned until 1964. In 1973, he was forced into exile for his outspoken comments regarding Soviet influence in Afghanistan.

Following the Saur Revolution in 1978, Mojaddedi’s brother was killed during new communist government. His period in exile was spent in several countries such as Denmark and Pakistan before his entry into Afghan politics. During exile in Peshawar, he founded the Jebh-e-Nejat-e Melli, the National Liberation Front, group.

In 1988, he was elected head of the Afghan interim government, based in Peshawar. In April 1992, he was elected the chair of the Islamic Jihad Council that was set up to establish a post-Soviet Afghan government. He entered Kabul on April 28 amid a large crowd and assumed the new Islamic republic, and offered a general amnesty to all Afghans except the deposed President, Mohammad Najibullah, who's fate would be decided by "the public".

After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Mujaddedi returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan and became chairman of the Loya Jirga. In 2005 he became chairman of the Meshrano Jirga and he was reappointed as member in 2011. On 26 August 2015, Mojaddedi launched a new political party, the Council of Jihad.