KABUL: A New York Times reporter expelled from Afghanistan and accused of having links to spy agencies will be allowed to return, newly-inaugurated President Ashraf Ghani said yesterday, vowing to defend press freedom.
Matthew Rosenberg (pictured), was ordered to leave the country in August after writing an article saying ministers and officials were threatening to seize power in Kabul to end a deadlock over the fraud-tainted presidential election result.
Rosenberg, 40, a three-year veteran of The Times’s Kabul bureau, was summoned to the attorney general’s office for what was billed as an “informal chat” about the article published in the newspaper.
The attorney general said the article was “contrary to the national interests, security and stability of Afghanistan” and ordered Rosenberg to leave the country within 24 hours.
“It appears that he has links with intelligence and spy agencies,” the expulsion order said.
The senior prosecutor who summoned Rosenberg, Gen Sayed Noorullah Sadat, whose title is general director of crimes against external and internal security, asked him to identify anonymous government sources quoted in the article, which he declined to do.
Rosenberg objected to General Sadat’s insistence that he sign a statement without a lawyer present. Rosenberg then asked to leave the interrogation room and was initially refused permission to do so, until the prosecutors conferred with a higher-ranking official.
They declined to name that official. “It’s a confidential source,” said another general who was present at the interrogation. He declined to give his own name as well, but was later identified as Gen Abdul Salem Ismat, who works in General Sadat’s directorate.
After the unidentified higher official consented, Rosenberg was allowed to leave on the condition that he return with a lawyer the next day. No mention of the travel ban was made at the time.
Later, however, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, Baseer Azizi, confirmed that a travel ban was in effect “until this issue over this article is resolved.” He also said the attorney general would demand that Rosenberg divulge his sources for the article.
The travel ban was first reported by Tolo TV, the leading private network here.
During the interrogation, General Sadat was unable to name any criminal offense that was under investigation, or cite any laws that had been broken.
“Right now, there’s no case, no legal charges, there’s nothing,” he said. But he did not rule out the possibility of charges in the future.
But Ghani, who eventually emerged as new president after a three-month political crisis, said the ban had been reversed.
“As promised, I’ve asked our Attorney General to end the ban on US journalist and grant him permission to (return to Afghanistan). We respect the freedom of press,” Ghani said on his official Twitter feed.
Rosenberg’s expulsion was the first of a journalist since the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001, raising fears for press freedom in Afghanistan after 13 years of international aid funding and development.
The United States embassy issued a sharp criticism of the expulsion, describing it as “unjustified and based on unfounded allegations”.
Rosenberg’s article said that senior officials were discussing forming an “interim government” to end the election stand-off — a move that would have rocked UN-led attempts to foster democracy in Afghanistan.
The election crisis was finally solved when Ghani was declared the winner and he agreed to power-sharing deal with his former poll rival Abdullah Abdullah, who took the new role of “chief executive”.
Ghani, who was sworn in last Monday, has also reversed another official decision since coming to power by signing a long-delayed deal to allow 10,000 US troops to stay in Afghanistan into next year.
All media were severely restricted under the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule, but newspapers, TV stations and websites have proliferated in the last decade.
Agencies
