RSF: Taliban Use Forced Confessions to Intimidate Journalists
Tawazon – Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the Taliban’s growing use of “forced confessions” to intimidate Afghan journalists and justify their arrests. The organization has called for the immediate release of Mehdi Ansari, a reporter for Afghan News Agency and six other journalists currently imprisoned in Afghanistan.
According to RSF, Ansari was detained by the Taliban and forced to make a televised confession, which was published on October 2, 2025, by Sadai Hindukush, a Facebook page linked to the Taliban’s intelligence agency. In the video, he was accused of spreading “anti-Taliban propaganda” and collaborating with exiled Afghan media outlets.
Southeast Asia desk head Celia Mercier said the confession video reflects “a strategy of intimidation increasingly used by Taliban intelligence to portray journalists as criminals and silence independent reporting.”
Other journalists, including Abuzar Sarem Sarpuli, head of Tawana News Agency and Shakib Nazari, a reporter for Japan’s NTV, were also reportedly forced to confess in separate videos after being arrested in July and August 2025.
At least three other journalists remain in Taliban custody, including Hamid Farhadi, an independent reporter sentenced to two years in prison last year for propaganda against the Taliban.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, Afghanistan’s media landscape has faced severe repression.More than 165 journalists have been arrested and the country now ranks 175th out of 180 in RSF’s 2025 World Press Freedom Index.
