On the eighth of January, a court in Afghanistan imprisoned an Afghan reporter to 18 months. Mahdi Ansary has reportedly been disseminating propaganda against Taliban and working with “anti-Taliban” outlets. The sentence is condemned by the Afghan AIJU, an associate of the International Federation of Journalists. “In the upcoming court seeing, attempts are being made to lighten Ansari’s term,” AIJU noted. They asked the Taliban to assure his quick freedom and to dismiss all allegations against him.
Mahdi Ansary, a journalist working for the Afghan News Agency, received a one-and-a-half-year jail term last week. Two months earlier, Ansary was taken into custody by the administration’s General Directorate of Intelligence in the capital’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood on unspecified allegations. The writer’s relatives filed him missing then. Ansary was last observed departing Pul-e-Khushk’s publication building.
Few hours later, the household was notified by the Taliban Security Agency about Ansary’s incarceration. According to the center, the journalist’s detention was connected to clips on his private YouTube account that were purportedly propagating against Taliban.
Ayatollah Waez Behsoudi, a Shia clergyman, gave a sermon in a clip posted in Ansary’s Youtube account. Behsoudi criticized the Taliban for demolishing the monument of the Hazara ruler in the capital and enacting new morality regulations. It is not the only occasion the Taliban administration detains Ansary. Late in 2023, the reporter was arrested over a posting on Facebook that referenced an AFKA investigation. The report was released on September 30, 2022, the first commemoration of a terrorist assault against a Hazara educational center in Kabul.
In another case, a journalist with Ariana News TV was reportedly abducted on this week. In Mazar-e-Sharif, Balkh province, Najib Faryad was taken captive by unknown assailants. The executive editor of Ariana News, Mujib Rahman Baheer, claims that the perpetrators took the reporter’s devices for reporting and recording.
According to the IFJ, Afghanistan’s journalists still encounter several obstacles. As the Taliban regain power, journalists continue to face intimidation, assault, and arrests. The center called on the Taliban “to cease the arbitrary detention of media professionals, and urge the international community to advocate for the full exercise of media freedoms and freedom of association in Afghanistan.”
Reporters and media professionals have seen over fifty percent of media outlets shut down since the Taliban took control four years ago. Since then, there has also been a notable increase in assault, bullying, arbitrary detentions, and illegal imprisonment.
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