Afghanistan has given a New York Times reporter 24 hours to leave the country, accusing him of not cooperating with an investigation into his reporting, the Attorney General’s office said yesterday.
Matthew Rosenberg, 40, was summoned for questioning on Tuesday after the newspaper ran a story about officials discussing plans to form an interim government and “seize power” if a deadlock over the presidential election failed to break soon.
“Due to the lack of proper accountability and non-cooperation, the Attorney General’s office has decided that Matthew Rosenberg should leave Afghanistan within 24 hours,” the office said in a statement. “He will not be permitted to enter the country again.”
Rosenberg said he and the Times had been cooperating fully.
“We simply requested a lawyer as is our right under Afghan law,” he said. “We were also never informed of a formal investigation and we do not understand how insisting on the right to a lawyer is not cooperating.”
“They had brought us there under the guise of a kind of semi-informal chat,” Rosenberg said of the talks. “It was kind of polite but insistent that we give them the names of our sources.”
Attorney General’s office spokesman Basir Azizi said Rosenberg was being investigated for publishing a story about government officials conspiring to “seize power” without disclosing the identity of his sources.
“The report is against our national security because right now, the election problem is ongoing and talks are at a very intricate stage,” Azizi said by telephone.
The UN is supervising an audit of all 8 million votes cast, but the process has proceeded slowly as rival camps scrutinize each vote.
NAI, which supports a free press in Afghanistan, said the expulsion violated laws protecting freedom of expression by the media.
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