The NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and some 15 French media and production companies have called on the Taliban to release the French-Afghan reporter Mortaza Behboudi, who has been held for a month in a Kabul prison on suspicion of espionage.
«For a month now, we have been doing everything possible, in various ways, to obtain his release. His imprisonment is truly absurd,» said RSF in a statement signed by several media officers denouncing the situation of Behboudi, who arrived in France at the age of 21.
He soon began to work as a journalist and to collaborate with several French media, such as France Télévisions, TV5 Monde, or ‘Libération’, and his pieces on Afghanistan under the Taliban, which earned him some awards from the French press, stand out.
«We call on the Taliban government to put an end to this senseless situation. Mortaza Behboudi is a well-known journalist, respected and appreciated by his media colleagues. We hope that our message will reach the Afghan capital and be heard in the offices of the authorities who took the decision to arrest him and who hold the key to his release,» RSF said.
Behboudi returned to Afghanistan on January 5 to carry out a series of reports, but just two days after his arrival, when he was about to collect his accreditation as a journalist, he was arrested.
«Since then, no one answers when his number is called. All that is known is that, after being detained for eleven days for not showing his accreditation, he was transferred to another prison in Kabul and is reportedly being charged with espionage,» the NGO recounted.
With the return to power of the Taliban in August 2021, Afghanistan has reversed the slight gains in individual rights that it had managed to achieve during the 20-year foreign military occupation.
Freedom of the press has been largely curtailed, as have the fundamental freedoms of women, who have been relegated to the private sphere after being banned from studying and performing certain jobs.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
