This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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Faizullah Khan, a reporter with a local news channel, was arrested this April by the Afghan security forces in Nangarhar province near the Afghan-Pakistan border after contacting the Pakistani Taliban who were in the Afghan territory.
“We have found photos of him showing him with a gun among terrorists,“ Wafiullah Usmani, the head of the national security court of Nangarhar, told AFP. “He is accused of contacting terrorists. He did not have any travel documents on him when he was arrested.” The reporter was arrested with two men who belonged to the Pakistani Taliban on the Afghan side of the border and the sentence to four years of jail was passed against the reporter’s plea on the 9th of July. Ahmad Zai Abdulzai, a spokesman for the provincial governor, informed that the journalist was arrested for “threatening national security”. Akhtar Munir, an official with the Pakistani embassy in Kabul, said its consulate in Jalalabad was assisting the Pakistani journalist who was sentenced to four years in jail.
He said the journalist, Faizullah Khan, would appeal against the verdict. “The Afghan government has been approached at various levels to help in releasing the journalist,” he added. An Afghan court had sentenced Khan to four years in jail for “contacting terrorists”, officials informed this Wednesday according to Dawn News. Reporters Without Borders has condemned the sentence. “The organisation questions the court’s motives for imposing such a heavy sentence. Was it a message to foreign reporters entering Afghanistan without proper travel documents, or was it a warning to foreign reporters investigating subjects regarded as ‘sensitive’?,” said the organizations website.
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