Four female activists in Afghanistan have been released by the country’s ‘de facto authorities’ following weeks of going missing, the United Nations has confirmed.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) took to Twitter to announce that, ‘After a long period of uncertainty about their whereabouts and safety, the four ‘disappeared’ Afghan women activists, as well as their relatives who also went missing, have all been released by the de facto authorities’.
Tamana Zaryabi Paryani, Parwana Ibrahimkhel, Zahra Mohammadi and Mursal Ayar went missing after participating in an anti-Taliban rally, but Afghanistan’s hardline Islamist rulers had consistently denied detaining them.
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Africa Today News, New York gathered that Ibrahimkhel was earlier released on Friday. According to reports, she went missing along with Paryani on January 19, days after taking part in a rally in Kabul calling for women’s right to work and education.
Mohammadi and Ayar went missing had also gone missing weeks later.
The Taliban, whose government is still not recognised by any country, have promised a softer version of the harsh rule that characterised their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001.
But since storming back to power in August, they have cracked down on dissent by forcefully dispersing women’s rallies, detaining critics and often beating local journalists covering unsanctioned protests.
Meanwhile, US President, Joe Biden had last Friday seized $7 billion in assets belonging to the previous Afghan government with the aim of splitting the funds between victims of the 9/11 attacks and desperately needed aid for post-war Afghanistan.
Africa Today News, New York reports that Biden officially seized the assets via an executive order on Friday.
It would be recalled that the money had been stuck in the New York Federal Reserve since the fall of the US-backed government in Kabul and takeover by the Taliban insurgency that fought US-led forces for 20 years.
A senior US official revealed that Biden will seek authority to funnel $3.5 billion of that into a humanitarian aid trust fund for Afghans, with the rest becoming potentially available to victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK