Kabul: An Afghan security team called on the Islamabad inspector-general of police (IGP) at the Foreign Office Tuesday, in connection with the probe into the abduction of Afghan Ambassador Najib Alikhil’s daughter.
Reports surfaced that the ambassador’s daughter, Silsila Alikhil, had been abducted and tortured. The Afghan foreign ministry had said that the girl was “abducted for several hours” in Islamabad last month after which Pakistani authorities launched a probe into the incident. Islamabad Inspector General of Police (IGP) Qazi Jamilur Rehman briefed the Afghan delegation headed by DG Security and Border Affairs, Hassan Faizi, about the investigation report of the incident.
This comes even as Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed on Monday had said that Pakistan had completed the investigation into the alleged abduction of the daughter of the former Afghan ambassador to Pakistan. Ahmed had said Pakistan would inform the Afghan team from Kabul about the investigation of the incident, adding, “If the Afghan team wants it can also hold meetings with the taxi drivers in which the ambassador’s daughter had traveled”.
The four-member team from Afghanistan had arrived in Islamabad on Sunday. Earlier on July 18, Shaikh Rasheed Ahmed had said that the incident involving the ambassador’s daughter “was not an abduction” at all.
Meanwhile, in other news, the Afghan Journalists Safety Committee (AJSC), released a statement regarding the detention of Shakib Shams, a local reporter for Salam Watandar, and Estorai Karimi, a correspondent for Pajhwok Afghan News, on August 1, by the Taliban, when they were covering the frontline in the southwestern part of Herat.
The Committee strongly condemned the act and said that, based on Islamic norms and the four Geneva Conventions and its protocols, journalists are considered civilian targets. “Any kind of violence, deprivation of liberty, coercion and interference in the work of journalism is against the above principles. In order to realize the rights of journalists and their freedom of action, it requires that the parties involved have specific solutions for the protection of journalists. Journalists are free to conduct their journalistic work in accordance with the principles and fundamentals of journalism and the laws of the country. Any imposed interview is against the freedom of the media. The Committee calls on the Taliban to clarify the matter. The Committee also urges the media and journalists to adhere to the rules of safety and not to do anything that would jeopardize their safety while covering the war,” the statement read.
Meanwhile, Russia is ready to maintain counterterrorism contacts with the United States, including in the context of Afghanistan, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for New Challenges and Threats chief, Vladimir Tarabrin, said.
“As for counterterrorism contacts with the Americans, including in the context of the Afghan affairs, we are ready for such interaction, but we cannot be more interested in it than our partners are,” Tarabrin said. From 2018-2019, Moscow and Washington maintained a full-fledged cross-agency dialogue on the entire spectrum of counterterrorism issues, but this cooperation was suspended under a contrived pretext at the US initiative, the diplomat recalled.
Nevertheless, Moscow continues pragmatic cooperation with the US Department of States’ Bureau of Counterterrorism where this meets Russia’s practical interests, Tarabrin added. “We are ready to continue counterterrorism cooperation, including the exchange of views on Afghanistan, both bilaterally and within multilateral formats if there is mutual interest,” Tarabrin concluded.
