Release Sayed Rahim Saidi now!
The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Afghan filmmaker Sayed Rahim Saidi, sentenced to three years in prison just last December. Ever since his arrest in 2024, Saidi has been subjected to torture and other brutal treatment, and is currently being denied the healthcare he urgently requires while incarcerated.
The 57-year-old filmmaker, journalist and broadcaster has been a visible figure in Afghanistan's film and media industry for more than two decades, most recently as the managing director of the independent media organization Anar Media. Sayed Rahim Saidi has previously been a member of the state-run Afghan Film Organization (AFO), before it was taken over by the Taliban in 2021, whose de facto regime has drastically altered the course and purpose of the organization.
Saidi, who has never left his home country, has been known for his short and longer-form documentaries on social change, non-discrimination, and particularly the Taliban's treatment of Afghanistan's female population. On July 14, 2024, Saidi was arbitrarily arrested by the Taliban's General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), allegedly because Saidi had been working on a screenplay regarding an Afghan girl being denied access to education by the Taliban's de facto regime's current laws disproportionately targeting girls and women.
As Amnesty International reports, Saidi was kept in solitary confinement for three months after his initial arrest, and denied access to a lawyer when his case was finally presented to Kabul's First Court on December 18, 2024. He was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in the Pol-e-Charkhi Prison on account of "spreading propaganda against the Taliban". Throughout the process, and ever since his incarceration, he has been continuously denied access to healthcare and his medication, needed to treat his continuously worsening health issues (lumbar disc herniation and prostate issues).
The ICFR joins Amnesty International and the international human rights community in calling upon the Taliban's regime to provide Sayed Rahim Saidi with the healthcare he requires, as well as his immediate and unconditional release. We urge our colleagues across the global film industry to join us in supporting our colleague in Afghanistan, in particular by contributing to the letter-writing campaign set up by our colleagues at Amnesty. It is a straightforward and easy process that will hopefully have a profound and positive impact on the life, health and freedom of our colleague Sayed Rahim Saidi.
