Afghan legal chief says beaten over graft campaign

KABUL, June 8 (Reuters) Afghanistan's attorney-general accused a local security-forces commander of ordering bodyguards to beat him up today, describing the attack as a reaction to the chief law officer's campaign against corruption.

General Deen Mohammad Jurat, former head of security in the interior ministry, was reported by a local TV station to have denied the allegation. Reuters could not reach him by phone.

Graft is widespread in Afghanistan, undermining confidence at home and abroad in the Western-backed administration of President Hamid Karzai, who has led the country since US-led troops overthrew the Taliban in 2001.

''You may know that I have declared jihad, holy war, against corruption, against criminals and crime and he is one of my potential targets,'' Attorney-General Abdul Jabar Sabet told a news conference in Kabul after the alleged attack.

Sabet said he had encountered Jurat and his bodyguards on a road north of Kabul, near a popular picnic spot. Sabet said he had been hit in the neck with a rifle butt but he did not appear to be harmed. There was no independent eye-witness account.

Jurat is also a former top military figure in the Northern Alliance, a group of militias and warlords that helped oust the Islamist Taliban regime.

''I had a number of people arrested whom he wanted to have released. He sent me many messages asking me to release a number of certain people,'' Sabet said.

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