APPEAL FROM,EMERGENCY TO RELEASE HANEFI

AFGHANISTAN MISNA; [After a day dominated by news related to Afghanistan, we gladly receive and publish the text for the appeal by Teresa Sarti Strada, president of the humanitarian organization "Emergency".]

We are in anguish for the safety of Rahmatullah Hanefi, the Afghan director of the Emergency hospital at Lashkargah.
At dawn on Tuesday 20/03 he was taken by the Afghan security services. From that moment none of us has been able to see or talk to him. No charge has been laid against him and there is no document that makes his detention official. For now. Because the ones detaining him have given us to understand that the accusations and the evidence can be invented.

Some Afghanis who work in the place where Rahmatullah Hanefi is detained, have told us that he is in the interrogation room, where they are torturing him with electric cables.

Rahmatullah Hanefi was the key person in the liberation of Daniele Mastrogiacomo, doing everything and nothing more than what the Italian government, through Emergency, asked him to do. Its aid could be crucial in the fate of Adjmal Nashkbandi, Mastrogiacomo’s interpreter, who has not yet returned to his family.

Today, march 25, the Afghan minister of health has informed us that during “a high level meeting on national security” presided by Hamid Karzai, it was decided not to release Rahmatullah Hanefi. They have led us to believe that there are no charges against him, but that they are ready to fabricate evidence. It is unacceptable that the price of the liberation of the Italian citizen Daniele Mastrogiacomo be paid by a courageous Afghan citizen and by Emergency. We have repeatedly asked the Italian government, in the past five days, to take action to secure the immediate release of Rahmatullah Hanefi and the government assured us that it would have done so. We forcefully ask the Italian government to honor its word. [AB]