After two long and dark years spent in the prisons of the Taliban regime, journalist Hamid Farhadi has finally been released. This news was met with immense joy and emotion by his family, especially his mother and wife, whose faces are finally lighting up with hope. This moment of relief brings with it a broader aspiration: that this release may be the prelude to a future in which not only political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, but the entire Afghan population can break the chains of what has been described as a true open-air prison. Hamid Farhadi had been arrested on September 3, 2024, by the Taliban, who raided his home in Kabul. About two weeks later, on September 19, a primary court in Kabul’s fourth district sentenced him to two years in prison. The charges brought against him—”propaganda against the system” and “cooperation with media operating in exile,” specifically Etilaat Roz, one of the country’s most authoritative and respected independent dailies—reflected the regime’s zero-tolerance policy toward any form of dissent. With the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, the newsroom’s life had changed drastically, and the paper became a primary target for the regime due to its independent editorial line. In September 2021, two contributors, journalist Taqi Daryabi and photojournalist Neamat Naghdi, were brutally arrested and tortured by Taliban forces while documenting a women’s protest in Kabul. Images of their beat-scarred bodies became a global symbol of the repression against the press in the new Afghanistan. Precisely because it was impossible to operate safely within the country, the Etilaat Roz newsroom was forced to relocate abroad. As the paper’s diaspora attempted to reorganize far from home, repression within Afghanistan’s borders continued to strike hard at anyone attempting to report the news. An emblematic example of this hardline approach is reflected in Farhadi’s own judicial ordeal. The Afghanistan Journalists Center welcomed the release while reiterating a fundamental point: Farhadi should never have been arrested in the first place. Furthermore, during his detention, his basic rights were trampled upon, starting with the total denial of access to defense counsel and the conduct of an unfair trial. During his sentence, Farhadi experienced the harshness and cruelty of the Taliban prison system, serving the first part of his term in the infamous Pul-e-Charkhi prison, and then, starting in March 2025, in the Bagram prison, which is notoriously known for its inhumane conditions. The journalist’s ordeal is part of a context of systemic destruction of press freedom. With the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, the situation for media workers in the country plummeted dramatically. Right from the early days of the new regime, repression proved brutal. Over the past five years, the Taliban have imposed suffocating restrictions on the media, regularly resorting to arbitrary arrests and torture against anyone attempting to tell the truth.
Data provided by Nai, an organization supporting exiled Afghan media, outlines a dramatic toll: since the Taliban seized power, over 700 cases of violence against journalists and media workers have been recorded in Afghanistan. Farhadi’s case immediately sparked a strong international mobilization led by human rights and press freedom organizations, including Amnesty International. While his release certainly represents a victory for international solidarity, the security situation for Afghan media professionals remains critical, even beyond national borders. A case in point is that of Seyyed Qasem Hashemi and Hamed Ehsas, who have been missing for over a month in Pakistan—a nation hosting hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, including many media workers seeking international protection or awaiting relocation to a third country. Their disappearance, which occurred under unclear circumstances, heightens the constant terror within the refugee community and among humanitarian organizations, highlighting how the Afghan-Pakistani border offers no real zone of safety. Many exiled journalists daily denounce the precariousness of their legal status, the risk of forced deportations back to Afghanistan, and the constant threat of retaliation by regime-aligned cells now operating well beyond the country’s borders.
The release of Hamid Farhadi restores hope, but it does not erase the wounds of a country where reporting is treated as a crime. As Bagram prison closes behind him, dozens of other reporters remain hostages to systematic repression, both inside and outside national borders. Farhadi’s liberation demonstrates the importance of international mobilization, but it reminds us that the safety of Afghan journalists is still far from assured and that global attention must never wane.
