An internationally well-known war journalist claimed she received a jail threat for not tweeting an apology to the Taliban for an article accusing Afghanistan’s Islamist authorities of “forcefully marrying teenage girls and using teenage girls as sexual slaves.”
Lynne O’Donnell, an Australian writer who presently writes a column for Foreign Policy magazine, tweeted, “l apologize for 3 or 4 reports written by me accusing the present authorities of forcefully marrying teenage girls and using teenage girls as sexual slaves by Taliban commanders.”
O’Donnell revealed on Wednesday that she was forced to make an apology by the Taliban.
“Tweet an apology or go to jail, said #Taliban intelligence,” she tweeted. “Whatever it takes: They dictated. I tweeted. They didn’t like it. Deleted, edited, re-tweeted. Made video of me saying I wasn’t coerced. Re-did that too.”
The journalist said that the agents disapproved of her reporting on LGBTQ persons and asserted that there were “no gays” in the country.
As of yet, the Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture and intelligence authorities have not reacted on O’Donnell’s disclosures.
Following her alleged detention, harassment, and threats, Lynne O’Donnell, who has reported occasionally from Afghanistan for over 20 years, departed the country on Wednesday for Pakistan.
O’Donnell was the Afghanistan bureau head for the Agence France-Presse wire service and the Associated Press between 2009 and 2017, according to her biography on the Foreign Policy website.
