Rehmat Shah Afridi, the editor of Pakistani dailies Frontier Post and Maidan, has been released after nine years in prison on trumped-up drugs charges. He was freed on parole on May 24 on the orders of Punjab’s interior ministry.
"Afridi’s release is excellent news for his family and friends and is a first step towards redressing a case that lacked transparency and led to his being given two death sentences," Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. "The many irregularities that marked the judicial investigation should have induced the courts to overturn his conviction and release him a long time ago."
RSF said, "This decision by the Punjabi authorities is an encouraging sign. Afridi’s release was one of the requests we made in an open letter to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani on April 16. He should now have the possibility of a retrial so that he can establish his innocence."
The Punjabi interior ministry ordered Afridi’s release on the grounds of good conduct in prison. He was held for the entire period in the eastern city of Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, where he never received the medical treatment that his poor health required.
"I was arrested after my paper published a report that the then director-general of the Anti-Narcotics Force, Zafar Abbas, and some army officers were involved in drug smuggling," Afridi told journalists on his release. "I am not ashamed of my imprisonment as all the charges brought against me are false and I would never accept this lie."
One of Afridi’s sons, Jalil Afridi, told RSF that his father will now file an appeal in order to prove his innocence. An appeal is already pending before the Supreme Court against a fine of 18,500 euros that Afridi is supposed to pay on both charges.
Arrested by the ANF on April 2, 1999 and charged with possession and trafficking in hashish, Afridi was sentenced on June 27, 2001 to death by hanging on both charges. Afridi always insisted on his innocence, and his family and RSF were able to show that his arrest was an act of revenge for articles revealing the involvement of the ANF and political and military officials in corruption and abuse of authority.
Accepting that trafficking in hashish is not a capital crime, the Lahore high court commuted Afridi’s death sentences to life imprisonment on June 3, 2004. It had been the first time in Pakistan’s judicial history that someone was given the death penalty on this charge.
