The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), in a statement, demanded that the Taliban authorities immediately release the Afghan producer Faizullah Faizbakhsh and the American journalist and filmmaker Ivor Shearer.
According to the CPJ, Ivor Shearer and Faizullah FaizBakhsh were detained by Taliban intelligence agents on August 17 while filming in Kabul’s Sherpur area in the Afghan capital.
On August 17, the US CIA launched a drone attack on the diplomatic area of Kabul, Sherpur, in an effort to kill Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda.
Shearer and Faizbakhsh were placed in blindfolds and taken to an unidentified location by approximately 50 armed Taliban intelligence agents, according to sources who spoke with the CPJ.
The reasons for Shearer and Faizbakhsh’s incarceration and the location of their detention, according to CPJ, are both unknown.
The CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna stated that the Taliban arrest of the American filmmaker and the Afghan producer “show[s] the group’s utter lack of commitment to the principle of freedom of the press in Afghanistan.”
Shearer landed in Afghanistan in February 2022 on a one-month visa after being granted permission to work there by the Taliban Ministry of Foreign Affairs to create a documentary about the previous 40 years of Afghan history.
In the statement released on Friday, August 19, CPJ not only called for the release of the two journalists who were held captive but also urged the Taliban to stop detaining reporters.
