December 14, 2024 04:51 (IST)
Follow us:
facebook-white sharing button
twitter-white sharing button
instagram-white sharing button
youtube-white sharing button
Bengaluru techie suicide: Karnataka Police issues summons to wife Nikita, her family members | French President Macron appoints centrist leader Francois Bayrou as new Prime Minister | Congress always prioritised personal interest over Constitution: Rajnath Singh | Jaishankar calls attack on Hindus in Bangladesh 'a source of concern' | Allu Arjun arrested over woman's death in stampede during Pushpa 2 premiere show | RBI receives bomb threat in Russian language, case filed | UP teenager kills mother, lives with body for 5 days | At least six people including a child killed in Tamil Nadu hospital fire | Amid Atul Subhash row, SC says mere harassment is not enough to prove abetment to suicide | India's D Gukesh becomes youngest ever world champion in chess

Afghanistan: Three convicted in BBC journalist killing case

| @indiablooms | Jan 04, 2019, at 10:15 am

Kabul, Jan 4 (IBNS):  A primary anti-terrorism court in Afghanistan has convicted three men in the murder case of a BBC reporter, media reports said on Friday.

One of the convicts was even given a death sentence.

Jamshid Rasouli, spokesman of the Attorney General Office (AGO), told Pajhwok Afghan News in Kabul that the murder case for being sensitive was heard in Kabul instead of Khost province it had happened.

The court sentenced one of the accused to death, another to 30 years in jail and the third to six years in jail, reported the Afghanistan-based news agency.

BBC reporter killed:

Unknown gunmen shot dead  Ahmad Shah in Khost City last year.

Shah worked for the BBC's Pashto language service and he was killed in April last year.

Ahmad Shah joined the BBC from local radio in early 2017 with a brief to cover his home province of Khost, in south-eastern Afghanistan, but he branched out to cover the neighbouring provinces of Paktia and Paktika as well for television, radio and online, reported BBC.

He first started working for the BBC as a freelance contributor before being recruited as a full-time reporter by BBC Pashto, reported the British media outlet.

The Taliban had rejected its involvement in the incident.

CPJ shares shocking tale:

As per the Committee to Protect Journalists report, the number of journalists targeted for murder in reprisal for their reporting nearly doubled in 2018 from a year earlier, driving up the overall count of journalists killed on the job. Afghanistan, where extremists have stepped up deliberate attacks on journalists, was the deadliest country and accounted for much of the increase. 

"In recent years, extremists have launched major bombings in Afghanistan, then detonated a second blast with the apparent express aim of killing journalists and other first responders. On April 30, 2018, one such double suicide attack claimed by the militant group Islamic State killed nine journalists. In an especially cynical ploy, the attacker disguised himself as a media worker and detonated his explosives amid a group of reporters rushing to the scene of the first explosion," the report further said.

Support Our Journalism

We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism

IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.

Support objective journalism for a small contribution.