On May 24, Mirza Hassani, the former owner and editor of Radio Aftab, was detained by Taliban agents at a checkpoint in District 12 of Herat city. Radio Aftab is a local station in the Daikundi province that was shutdown following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.

Hassani was transferred to the 12th Directorate of the Taliban’s GDI in Herat after agents searched his phone and found news reports posted on his social media. The journalist has reportedly been beaten and tortured while in custody and is accused of working as a reporter for the anti-Taliban militant group, National Resistance Front (NRF), but has not been officially charged. Hassani’s family and the Herat’s Scholars Council called for his immediate release.

Sources in Daikundi province have confirmed that the Taliban have arrested the owner of Aftab Radio Station in Herat province, which is an active radio station in Daikundi.

According to sources, Mirza Hassani, the owner of Aftab Radio and the head of the network of civil society organizations in Daikundi has been detained and severely tortured by the Taliban in Herat province.

He has been in the Taliban’s custody for the last couple of days. Hassani’s family members and Herat Scholars Council have been trying to release him, but they have failed.

The promotion of freedom of speech is one of the major achievements that the international community has been proud of for the last 20 years. Millions of funds were invested in this sector, but with the rise of the Taliban in power, many achievements of the last 20 years are on the edge of dismissal and demolition by the Taliban. Freedom of speech promotion has been one of those achievements.

Taliban do not care about any value that is important to human social development. Any values that are not aligned with their extremist ideology or that can cause a barrier to their biased religious ideologies deserve to be demolished and removed.

Since the Taliban has returned to power, the group has arbitrarily arrested many journalists, media activists, and civil society members. In addition, the rebels have imposed strict restrictions on media outlets, censoring the content of the media and directly threatening any violator of their rules.