Afghans Beyond Taliban

US human rights lawyers charged Sunday that US military prisons are "legal black holes" and the force is detaining journalists to "shut people up" about activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. A vast detention camp planned for the main US base in Afghanistan will be a "second Guantanamo" where laws do not apply, they said at a press conference about an...

An Afghan journalist, Rahmatullah Naikzad, has been freed after his pictures and video footage of 2 women brazenly executed by the Taliban led intelligence officials to hold him for questioning for two days, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The pictures and footage of the slain women were aired internationally and in Afghanistan, prompting widespread anger in Afghanistan over the killings...

British journalist Sean Langan has been released after being abducted and held in Afghanistan for three months by a group associated with the Taliban, the Press Associaiton (PA) has reported. The freelance reporter was working for the Channel 4 programme Dispatches when he was abducted on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some details: A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) expressed alarm over the report that a woman journalist, Jameela Rishteen Qadiry, reportedly received telephone calls threatening her with the same fate as that of murdered BBC journalist Abdul Samad Rohani in Afghanistan. According to information received from an IFJ affiliate, the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association (AIJA), Qadiry, a...

An Afghan reporter working for the Pashtu service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been killed in the southern province of Helmand, Afghan officials said on Sunday. The body of 25-year-old Abdol Samad Rohani, was found near the city of Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, one day after he was abducted. Rohani disappeared after his vehicle was stopped...

A year after the gruesome muder of Zakia Zaki, the director Sada-e-Solh (Peace Radio), her killers remain unpunished. Her husband says there has been no progress in the official investigation, probably because of pressure from those who ordered her murder. Zaki was shot in her home in Jabalussaraj, in the northern Afghanistan province of Parwan, in the early hours of June 6, 2007. “Today we pay

Lawyers for a Canadian television journalist being held as an enemy combatant in Afghanistan filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing the Bush administration of holding him illegally and demanding his release, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Afghani native Jawed Ahmad, 22, has been held in Bagram, Afghanistan, for more than six months without being charged, according to the complaint filed in US...

(Reuters): Afghan television journalist Niloufar Habibi never wore the all-enveloping burqa until she was stabbed on her doorstep. Now it is her disguise. More than six years after the overthrow of the Taliban, Afghanistan remains a deeply conservative country where many still oppose women working in public, visible roles. "If I go outside people will see where I'm going and see what I'm doing,"...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on the authorities in Afghanistan to do everything possible to protect women journalists, several of whom have been attacked or threatened since the start of the year. One, Niloufar Habibi, has continued to receive death threats since leaving hospital after being stabbed on May 15 in the northwestern city of Herat and has to change residence every day....

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has expressed alarm at a report of a grenade attack on the home of a female radio journalist in Herat province, Afghanistan. It is the second attack on radio producer Khadija Ahadi’s home in two weeks. The Afghan Independent Journalists’ Association (AIJA), an IFJ associate, reported that unidentified gunmen threw a grenade inside Khadija’s home on...