Afghan officials are seeking Mr. Kandahari’s arrest on murder, torture and abuse of prisoner charges, and accuse the American military of shielding him from capture.

American military officials have insisted they do not have Mr. Kandahari and do not know where he is; they also say that repeated military investigations into the disappearances and murders of at least 15 people from Wardak Province have shown no wrongdoing by American soldiers. The results of those investigations, however, have not been made public.

The senior Afghan investigator for Defense Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that investigators had now raised the toll of missing and dead to 17 people, all of whom were said to have been seized by the A Team in Nerkh. He provided names for all 17, and none has since been seen alive: adding in the latest body to be discovered, eight are still missing and nine have been found dead.

Although there has been no testimony directly tying American soldiers to the abuse or killing of those detainees, the investigator questioned whom Mr. Kandahari answered to. “There is no question that Zakaria directly tortured and murdered,” he said. “But who is Zakaria? Who recruited him, gave him his salary, his weapons? Who kept him under their protection? He worked for Special Forces. That a member of their team was committing such crimes and they didn’t know it is just not credible.”

The Afghan investigator, however, disputed earlier Afghan official accounts that suggested an American voice could be heard in the videotaped session of Mr. Mohammad’s torture, and he said the torture session took place in Afghan government offices in Nerkh district, not on the base itself. The videotape has not been released publicly.