A Foreign Policy columnist confirmed that the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) threatened her to either apologize for her previous reports about the group or serve jail time.
Lynne O'Donnell said on Wednesday that she was forced to apologize and published everything, which the Taliban had dictated to her, on her Twitter profile.
The FP columnist left Afghanistan for Islamabad on Wednesday.
According to her, the Taliban even made a video of her to project that she was not forced to apologize.
Lynne O'Donnell had published a series of tweets in which she apologized for her reporting about recent developments within the Taliban. She had written, “l apologize for 3 or 4 reports written by me accusing the present authorities of forcefully marrying teenage girls and using teenage girls as sexual slaves by Taliban commanders. This was a premeditated attempt at character assassination and an affront to Afghan culture.”
This is not the first time that the Taliban has pressurized foreign journalists in Afghanistan. In the past few months, the Taliban has arrested two western journalists in Kabul. Among others, Andrew North, was one of the journalists detained by the group.
