Afghans Beyond Taliban

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has demanded action to secure the immediate release of two French journalists and their three Afghan assistants who have been held hostage since their abduction six months ago and a Japanese journalist missing for three months. Stéphane Taponier, Hervé Ghesquière, and their three Afghan assistants, working for France 3, were taken hostage in the...

New demands have been made by a militant group calling itself the Asian Tigers, the captors of freelance journalist Asad Qureshi, who has been held in Pakistan since March 26, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In a video sent to the Rome-based news agency Adnkronos International Tuesday, the abductors insisted that Pakistan release at least 160 Islamic militants in exchange...

New demands have been made by a Taliban group that is holding captive two French television journalists, Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, translator Mohammed Reza, and the group’s driver, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). They were taken in Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul, in December. Speaking alternately in English and French, the two French reporters appeared...

Freelance Japanese journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka had apparently been abducted in northern Afghanistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said quoting a Japanese official. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano told journalists he was aware of Japanese media reports about the abduction, according to Tokyo-based agency Kyodo News and international news reports, but declined to comment...

Intelligence officials in Afghanistan privately issued a ban on live coverage to news outlets on Monday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) spokesman Said Ansari told media managers not to report live from the scene of a terrorist attack anywhere in Afghanistan in a series of individual meetings held Monday, saying the order was for the...

Rupert Hamer, the London-based Sunday Mirror’s defence correspondent, was killed Saturday when the US military vehicle in which he was travelling was hit by a roadside bomb in southwestern Afghanistan. Photographer Philip Coburn was seriously injured in the blast. Hamer, a 39-year-old father of three, and Coburn, 43 were embedded with a US Marine Corps unit. A US marine and an Afghan soldier were...

Several Afghan journalists’ organisations have appealed to the people who are holding a France 3 television crew hostage to free them without delay. More than 30 journalists in the provinces of Kapisa, Panshir and Parwan issued a statement Thursday call for the release of their “French colleagues.” The France 3 crew that was abducted on December 29 while investigating the construction of a road in...

Canadian journalist Michelle Lang died Wednesday while embedded with Canadian troops in Afghanistan, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Lang was working for the Calgary Herald and Canwest News Service when she was killed along with four Canadian soldiers while travelling in a Canadian military convoy. Their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb about two miles...

A TV crew working for the French TV station France 3 that was abducted in the northeastern province of Kapisa on December 29. The victims include two French journalists and at least two Afghans, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The security situation in Afghanistan, including the Kapisa region, is such that we cannot rule out any hypothesis,” Paris-based RSF said. “We will have to...

Three journalists, all on assignment for the Guardian, were abducted in December 2009 and released after six days, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting the paper. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi, ad two unnamed Afghan journalists had been planning to interview militants in Afghanistan’s mountainous Kunar province near the border with Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province...