AGO Examined 60 Cases of Violent against Journalists in Recent Years

The Attorney General Office (AGO) of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan based on its commitment to supporting freedom of speech and journalists has examined 60 cases of violence against journalists in recent years.

These cases include murder, beating, treating, illegal detention, suicide, armed attacks and etc. and in regards to these cases 83 perpetrators have been penalized for cash, long imprisonment and even execution.

These cases have occurred at Kabul, Nangarhar, Herat, Ghor, Nemroz, Farah, Kunduz, Kandahar, Balkh, Badghis, Zabul, Khost, Faryab, Parwa, Kapisa and Baghlan provinces.

From those number, 33 cases were occurred prior to the establishment of the Journalists Security and Safety Committee and 27 cases occurred after the establishment of this committee and have been reached to the AGO. Perpetrators of the 33 cases have all been convicted and 38 people related to that were known as culprit.

Also, the rest of the 27 cases that were reached to AGO after the establishment of the Journalists Security and Safety Committee, 12 cases were finalized and 15 others are under the process and in relating to these cases, 45 people were known as the culprit.

Among those, we can mention the terror case of Ahmad Shah, a BBC reporter at Khost, for which a number of people were arrested and one of the perpetrators was sentenced to execution and another one was imprisoned for 30 years. Similarly, on the case of murdering Abdul Manan Arghand, a reporter for Kabul News at Kandahar, two-person were arrested on the charge of Arghand murdering and one of the perpetrators was sentenced to death.

Organizing press conference for supporting the freedom of speech and providing on-time reports for the investigation of violence cases against journalists and tracking these cases through CMS at different phases (detects, investigation and trial) is another achievement of the AGO.