Local Journalist Freed After 19 Days in Detention in Panjshir Province

Local Journalist Freed After 19 Days in Detention in Panjshir Province

December 14, 2014

Panjshir: The acting editor-in-chief of Panjshir's state-owned biweekly who was arrested for publishing a poem considered blasphemous has been released after 19 days in prison.

Abdul Jabbar Jobran, told AFJC that he had copied the controversial poem from the internet and published it in the biweekly on October 13. "I never intended to offend anyone by publishing these poems, and I deeply regret that it did," Jobran stated.

Jobran was arrested by the police following a meeting of local clerics with Panjshir's governor on November 25. The clerics demanded that the local administration punish the person responsible for publishing the poem. Five days later, Ahmad Hanyesh, AFJC's representative in Panjshir province, expressed the organization's concerns about Jobran's arrest to provincial governor Abdul Rahman Kabiri and urged him to release Jobran as soon as possible.

Kabiri called the imprisonment an attempt by the local administration to protect the journalist and promised to release him soon. However, it is worth noting that Afghanistan's media law requires journalists' cases to be first reviewed by the Media Commission before they can be arrested. In the case of Abdul Jabbar, this process was not followed.

AFJC emphasizes that while the press is required to respect Afghanistan's official religion, authorities cannot assume the right to arrest journalists. In October, a columnist from Afghanistan Express Daily triggered demonstrations in several cities around the country by condemning the Islamic State (IS) and the Taliban. Protesters denounced the article as blasphemous and called on the government to punish the publication. A week later, it was confirmed that the editor had escaped from Afghanistan and the newspaper's offices were closed.