Parents of photojournalist Danish Siddiqui, who was killed in Afghanistan last year, have approached International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Taliban.
Siddiqui, a Pulitzer Prize winner working for Reuters, was embedded with Afghan special forces when he was killed on July 16 during a failed attempt by government troops to retake Spin Boldak, a town near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
New Delhi-based lawyer Avi Singh told an online news conference that Siddiqui’s parents were seeking legal action against six leaders and other unidentified commanders of the Taliban at the Hague-based ICC on the grounds that the group targeted and killed their son because he was a photojournalist and an Indian national.
Siddiqui was based in New Delhi and had traveled to Afghanistan to cover the Taliban campaign to retake the country like the United States and its allies were withdrawing forces to end their 20-year-long war there.
Siddiqui, 38, was “illegally detained, tortured and killed by the Taliban, and his body was mutilated”, Singh and his family said in a statement issued before the news conference.
“These acts and this killing constitutes not only a murder but a crime against humanity and a war crime.”
A commander of Afghanistan’s erstwhile Special Operations Corps that had hosted Siddiqui said the photojournalist was mistakenly left behind with two commandos when soldiers withdrew from Spin Boldak amid fierce fighting with the Taliban.
In August, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied reports that Siddiqui was captured and executed, rejecting the assertions of the Afghan security forces and Indian government officials as “completely wrong”.
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