Afghanistan

Kabul Weekly claims it has been put out of business after daring to criticise President Hamid Karzai. On Wednesday staff met with their editor, Mohammad Faheem Dashty, for the final time after producing the last edition of a newspaper that has been a regular sight on the streets of the capital since 2002, according to a report in the Guardian. Dashty said he had no choice but to shut down after...

A British photojournalist was severely injured after stepping on a makeshift bomb in southern Afghanistan. Giles Duley, a freelance photographer associated with the Camera Press Agency in London, was on a foot patrol with Afghan and American soldiers on February 7 near the village of Sangsar, in rural Kandahar Province, when he stepped on a pressure-plate that detonated a hidden explosive charge...

A night-time attack was carried out by eight gunmen on Radio Paiman in the northeastern city of Baghlan on Monday. The assailants beat and gagged the guard and then destroyed all the equipment, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). No journalist was injured. “Attacks on journalists have increased since the start of the year, which makes their work...

Leading Afghan journalist Hojatullah Mujadadi was acquitted Wednesday at the end of a two-day trial on a trumped-up charge of abetting insurgents, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). A former National Radio reporter who now runs Radio Kapisa FM, a station based in the northeastern province of Kapisa, Mujadadi was arrested by the National Directorate of...

A leading journalist and writer in Afghanistan was the victim of an acid attack Tuesday as he left his home in the Afghan capital Kabul. Razaq Mamoon, who works for several media outlets and presents a programme on the independent station Tolo TV, was taken to the military hospital in the capital. Doctors say though he is suffering from first-degree burns his injuries are not life-threatening and...

Assadolah Vahidi, editor of daily Sarnewesht, was arrested Sunday on the orders of Afghanistan’s chief prosecutor based on a complaint from President Hamid Karzai’s national security advisor, without any consultation with the Commission for Media Complaints, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). This arrest was illegal, in terms of the way it was carried out...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has described as baseless and unacceptable a claim by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid that Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, two French TV journalists who have been held hostage for the past year in northwestern Afghanistan, were “engaged in gathering information that has the nature of intelligence gathering.” “These grave...

With just days to go to the first anniversary of the abduction of French TV journalists Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier and three Afghan assistants in northeastern Afghanistan, the French foreign ministry announced Monday that it has received and authenticated a video from their captors showing that they are still alive. “This is of course good news for the families, who have been reassured...

A French government spokesman indicated Tuesday that progress being made to secure the release of two French TV journalists abducted in Kabul nearly a year ago. Spokesman Francois Baroin told the broadcaster RTL: "The liberation process is ongoing, but this will still take some time." His remark came after a video surfaced in which the two journalists sent private messages to their relatives...

Radio Kapisa director Hojatullah Mujadadi is being subjected to prolonged detention by the Afghan intelligence agency known as the National Directorate of Security (NDS). Saturday, Mujadadi completed his third month of being held at NDS headquarters in Kabul, where he has not been allowed to see a lawyer, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The NDS and...