(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the Afghan interim government’s foreign affairs minister, Abdullah Abdullah, RSF welcomed the identification of the murderers of Maria Grazia Cutuli, a correspondent from the Italian daily “Corriere Della Serra”, Harry Burton and Azizullah Haidari, a cameraman and photographer, respectively, from the Reuters news agency, and Julio Fuentes, a journalist […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the Afghan interim government’s foreign affairs minister, Abdullah Abdullah, RSF welcomed the identification of the murderers of Maria Grazia Cutuli, a correspondent from the Italian daily “Corriere Della Serra”, Harry Burton and Azizullah Haidari, a cameraman and photographer, respectively, from the Reuters news agency, and Julio Fuentes, a journalist from the Spanish daily “El Mundo”. “A day after two journalists were attacked in Afghanistan, this progress [in the investigation] encourages the authorities to redouble their efforts to ensure that deliberate attacks against journalists do not go unpunished,” stated RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. RSF urged the minister to do everything in his power to ensure that the journalists’ murderers are arrested and tried as quickly as possible, and also expressed hope that an investigation will be opened to discover the exact circumstances surrounding the deaths of Johanne Sutton, Pierre Billaud and Volker Handloik, three other journalists who were killed in a Taliban ambush on 11 November 2001 (see IFEX alerts of 13 and 12 November 2001).
According to information obtained by RSF, Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino discussed a meeting he held with the Afghan defense minister, General Mohammad Qasim Fahim, who told him that the authorities had identified the murderers of the four journalists killed on 19 November in an ambush on the road from Kabul to Jalalabad. A suspect is currently being questioned by police.
On 10 February 2002, Minister of the Interior Yunus Qanuni announced that the authorities had evidence concerning two suspects, one of whom had admitted to being involved in killing the four journalists. According to one official, the suspect led the authorities to the scene of the ambush and showed them some of the murdered journalists’ personal effects.
