“I was tortured almost every day,” he testifies

“I spent ten months in prison, I was tortured almost every day,” tells Tuesday October 24 on France Inter the Franco-Afghan journalist Mortaza Behboudi, detained for 284 days in Afghanistan and released last Wednesday. The journalist was arrested on January 7, while he was taking photos of students in front of the Kabul faculty. For a month, he was questioned: “I was blindfolded, my hands and feet handcuffed, they wanted me to admit that I was a spy for the French services.”

The journalist was then transferred to another prison, “mixed with members of Daesh”, who tried to “choke him” a night. The Franco-Afghan, who worked notably for France Televisions and Radio France, recounts the beatings and torture. “I had to say that everything was fine on the phone,” he specifies.

“For more than seven months, I did not hear my mother, nor my wife, every night I wanted to see her in my dreams”, he confides, moved. The journalist admits that he “expected more from the French government”. “I wonder if he called my wife,” he asks. Mortaza Behboudi does not know if he will return to Afghanistan. “Maybe one day if the government changes”he confides. “We need to understand reality and we can’t do it without the voices of locals and reporters on the ground.”