KABUL (SW) – The National Directorate of Security announced here on Tuesday that the head of Logar civil society, Mohammad Mosa Mehmoodi, is under custody over false claims in connection with the pedophile ring that allegedly abused hundreds of boys.
Mehmoodi can been seen in the video released by the NDS confessing of fabricating the story for the sake of asylum in a foreign country. It is important to note Mehmoodi and Ehsanullah Hamidi, human rights activist from Paktia province, went missing from Kabul last week.
This comes after the Guardian reported that a pedophile ring involved in the abuse of at least 546 boys from six schools has been discovered in Afghanistan’s Logar province. According to the British daily newspaper, some of the victims of the abuse have since been murdered according to the campaigners who first discovered videos of abuse posted to a Facebook page.
Meanwhile, the Committee of Human Rights Defenders as well as other rights organizations have criticized the NDS for arresting Mehmoodi without the court orders.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has also dubbed this arrest as illegal, and has called for release of Mehmoodi and Hamidi. “Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission is deeply concerned about the illegal detention of civil society activists Mr. Musa Mahmudi and Ehsanullah Hamidi, who were investigating the cases of alleged child sexual abuse in Logar province,” AIHRC said in a tweet.
Amnesty International has called on Afghanistan’s intelligence agency to release two Afghan activists who were arrested after exposing a pedophile ring that allegedly abused hundreds of boys.
“Afghanistan’s intelligence agency must immediately release these human rights defenders,” Amnesty campaigner Samira Hamidi said in a statement.
ENDS
