CPJ Urges Kabul Authorities To Release 4 Afghan Journalists Who Reported From Taliban-seized Area

WASHINGTON, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 28th Jul, 2021 ) :The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Afghan authorities to immediately release four journalists - Bismillah Watandoost, Qudrat Soltani, Moheb Obaidi, and Sanaullah Siam - and drop their investigation into their work, as well as allow members of the press to report freely.

According to a report, officials with Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, the country's national intelligence service, arrested Watandoost, Soltani, and Obaidi, reporters with the Kandahar-based local radio station Millat Zagh Radio, and Siam, a camera operator with the China's Xinhua news Agency, in the Shur Anadam area of the southern city of Kandahar after they returned from a reporting trip to the southern border town of Spin Boldak.

The four were in Spin Boldak interviewing Taliban commanders after they captured the border crossing with Pakistan, according to the reports.

Mirwais Estanikzai, spokesperson for Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior Affairs, said that authorities were investigating the four journalists on accusations of spreading "propaganda to the enemy," according to the reports.

The CPJ said it was unable to determine if the four have been officially charged.

"Afghan authorities must immediately release radio journalists Bismillah Watandoost, Qudrat Soltani, and Moheb Obaidi, and camera operator Sanaullah Siam, drop their investigation, and cease harassing journalists for their work," Steven Butler, CPJ Asia's programme coordinator, in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

"Journalists in Afghanistan must be given full freedom to report on all aspects of the conflict without fear of arrest or harassment," he added.

On July 16, Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was killed while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters in Spin Boldak, as CPJ documented at the time