KABUL (AFP) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation into the death of an Afghan in detention, saying the man may have been “killed by coalition troops,” his office said Tuesday.

The announcement came one day after NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said that a man had been “found dead in his holding cell” in the southern province of Kandahar.
ISAF said the detainee was captured during an operation on Saturday and died on Sunday, but refused to give further details when contacted by AFP.
“Based on reports received from Arghandab district, coalition troops entered the Arghandab district prison at 9.30 pm Sunday... and killed a detainee named Mullah Mohibullah,” Karzai's office quoted him as saying.
Arghandab is one of the most unstable areas of Kandahar, where the nine-year Taliban-led insurgency is concentrated, and is currently the focus of a major U.S.-led military operation aimed at rooting out militants.
Karzai also ordered an investigation into the man's death, the statement from his office said.
“The Afghan president ordered security and local entities in Kandahar to investigate the circumstances around the incident that took place in the Arghandab district prison and report back to the president,” it said.
Both ISAF and Afghan authorities in Kandahar previously said they were investigating the circumstances of the man's death.
The man died just days after a U.S. think tank said the U.S. military was mistreating detainees at a secret prison in Afghanistan, an allegation rejected by the Pentagon, which said it always treated prisoners “humanely”.
The U.S. military has been under the scrutiny of rights groups for years after revelations of abuse at prisons in Iraq and at CIA “black sites”, and in the light of controversy over the military jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
ISAF said Monday there were no secret prisons in Afghanistan.