Islam Totakhil, a journalist with Radio Jawanan, has been released after spending six months in Taliban prison, sources said on Thursday.
Totakhil was detained by Taliban intelligence forces in January, when the Taliban shuttered the offices of Radio Jawanan and Radio Begum in Kabul. He was subjected to torture during his detention, sources said.
Taliban had accused him of publishing material on social media related to Afghanistan’s women’s cricket team, the sources added.
His release comes amid a wider crackdown on journalists and media workers. In recent weeks, Taliban intelligence officers and their morality enforcers have intensified arrests of reporters in Kabul and other provinces, raising alarm across Afghanistan’s fragile media community.
Several journalists have been detained in recent weeks by a joint unit of Taliban intelligence and virtue police, according to reporters and rights monitors.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, more than 500 cases of arrest, threats and violence against journalists have been documented. Rights groups say the majority of those incidents involved the intelligence directorate and the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue.
Once ranked among the region’s most vibrant press environments, Afghanistan has plummeted in global press freedom indexes since the Taliban takeover.
