On October 14, Hekmat Aryan, director of the privately owned Khushal Radio broadcaster in Ghazni province, was sentenced to one month in prison by the provincial court for allegedly broadcasting content related to Taliban military operations. The court ruled that the time Aryan had already spent in detention at the Ghazni Intelligence Department would be count toward his sentence, resulting in an additional 15 days in prison.
Aryan was arrested on September 29 by dozens of Taliban Intelligence agents at his office in Ghazni City. He faced accusations of discussing past Taliban suicide attacks, referred to as ‘martyrdom operations’, in a broadcast by his station. Sulaiman Rahel, the Khushal Radio news manager, denied these claims, stating that the audio was recorded during the previous government rule and had never been aired by the station.
In a separate incident, on October 5, Afghan News Agency reporter Mahdi Ansar was arrested by the Taliban’s Intelligence Directorate in the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Kabul. Ansar was reported missing by his family after he was last seen leaving the outlet’s office in Pul-e-Khushk that evening.
The following day, as his family searched several police stations in the city, they were informed by police that Ansar had been taken into custody by Taliban intelligence forces. His current location and the charges against him remain unknown.
A week after these incidents, the Taliban’s morality ministry announced on October 14 its commitment to enforcing a law that prohibits news media from publishing images of any living things, a law first implemented during the Taliban’s rule from 1996-2001. Journalists in Afghanistan were informed that the rule will be implemented gradually.
The IFJ said: “Journalists in Afghanistan continue to face arbitrary and opaque arrests amid an ever shrinking legal environment. The IFJ continues to stand in solidarity with the journalists and media workers still in Afghanistan and in the Diaspora, and urge the international community to increase support for our embattled colleagues.”