He Battled the Communists and Was Tortured By the Taliban. Will Europe Take Him In?
A militant rebel leader left everything behind to flee Afghanistan for Greece. Now he and his family live in limbo while his violent past continues to haunt him.
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Photos by Marilena Stavrakidis
A portly, bespectacled man dressed in a casual tricolored jacket, a woolen sweater and gray jeans is busy blowing his kid’s nose with a handkerchief. On this beautiful January day, they’re at a crowded cafe in Victoria Square, a plaza in the heart of Athens, Greece. There’s a mug of coffee for the adult, fresh orange juice in a stemmed glass for the youngster. The dad is stern and stolid, his movements around his son, who has a chunk of gelled hair sticking straight up, tender all the same. It’s not the picture one might expect of a former Jihadist commander who says he has taken part in an assortment of violent transgressions, like killing a healthy number of “atheist communists,” and burying forty of his own dead soldiers’ bodies on orders from the Taliban, at gunpoint.
Mir Abdul Rahim Mohammadi, 44, was a leader of the Jamiat-e-Islami military faction in his native Afghanistan. The group was originally founded as a Muslim political party with a communit…
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