SAN DIEGO, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Skeletal remains were identified as those of a suspect in the slaying of a San Diego cab driver who had been a government official in Afghanistan, police said.
The bones -- which included a skull with a bullet hole -- were identified Thursday through DNA testing as those of Ismael Lopez, a 28-year-old petty criminal who was wanted in the September slaying of Mir Najibullah Sadat Sahou, a onetime head of the Afghanistan Central Bank.
San Diego police said they had not determined whether Lopez had committed suicide at the water's edge on the same night he allegedly shot Sahou in a robbery and then ditched his cab in the upscale coastal community of La Jolla, The San Diego Union-Tribune said.
The case has thus far been treated as a simple robbery.
Sahou had taken an active interest in Afghan politics since moving to the United States in 1992, four years before the Taliban takeover in his native land. Sahou hosted a weekly talk show program produced in Irvine on Ariana Afghanistan International TV.
There has been no indication that Sahou had any enemies in Afghanistan and police found his abandoned cab a short distance from the ocean where recreational divers discovered Lopez's bones about a month after Sahou's death.
