Why is Afghanistan's 'torturer-in-chief' living in a pink house?

During the height of his tenure as Afghanistan's notorious 'torturer-in-chief' he was feared by his victims, subjecting them to electric shocks and vicious beatings.

But now Haji Gulalai, the former head of Afghan spy services, has allegedly forged a new life in Southern California, where he is said to occupy a pink, two-storey stucco house in a quiet Los Angeles suburb.

Gulalai, now in his early 60s, was once a key figure in the Afghanistan war - 'a big wheel in a machine that ground up a lot of people', the
Washington Post reports.

In Kandahar he ran the spy services operations following the US-led invasion in 2001. How he left behind that brutal career in Afghanistan and landed in L.A. - in an area that is said to remind him of the dry heat and landscape of Kandahar - is unclear.

Gulalai was able to bypass immigration barriers faced by Afghans whose work for the United States made them potential targets of the Taliban, the paper reports.

Despite links to the United States intelligence services, the CIA denied aiding his entry.

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