Tolo TV's control room - defending free broadcasting

Managers of Afghanistan’s most popular independent broadcaster describe as “unjust and inequitable” a demand from the Western-sponsored government’s Information Ministry that they apologize to the official who ordered last week’s violent police raid of the station. 

The broadcasters' statement released today concludes:  "Tolo TV is not able to apologise to a person or organization in respect of wrongs it has not committed."

President Karzai’s Information Minister, Kharim Khoram, is a confederate of rogue Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabet, who dispatched more than 50 armed policemen against Tolo TV’s studios. Seven reporters were detained and beaten. No warrants had been issued.

Both Sabet and Khoram are former long time aides to fugitive warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of Afghanistan’s and the West’s most-wanted terrorists. They are allied with other notorious figures who are attempting to smother free journalism in the capital – evidently with the tacit approval of President Karzai’s international backers. No condemnation of the raid has been forthcoming from US, British or Canadian officials.

For more about the Karzai regime’s crackdown on the media, see skyreporter’s earlier dispatches on the case. For more about Sabet, Britain’s and Canada’s man on the Karzai team, see ON HER MAJESTY’S SERVICE and the AFGHAN HEROIN series.