Afghan journalist Kobra Hassani, who fled the Taliban to Ukraine, may be handed over back to the new Afghan "authorities", Vot Tak writes . Hassani, while Afghanistan was under US control, worked for a construction company, later worked as a school teacher, and then as an administrative assistant in an Australian company. Later, she decided to go into journalism, and managed to work both in the Turkish Anadolu Agency and in the American NPR News Agency. Simultaneously with her journalistic work, the girl opened her own restaurant in Kabul, where you could read books. It was called "Magic Restaurant". Kobra also ran a YouTube channel where she read poems about freedom.
After the Western coalition withdrew its military from Afghanistan in August 2021 and the Taliban seized power again, journalists, and, especially, women began to be persecuted. In March 2021, in the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, three employees of a local TV station were shot in the head. Hassani was forced to flee. The girl fled to Ukraine and entered the Kiev State University at the Faculty of Economics. So she was at the epicenter of a new war.
After spending almost a month under the bombing, Cobra decided to flee to Europe. The Afghan woman did not have a Schengen visa or a permanent residence permit, she only had a Ukrainian student visa. Therefore, she decided to find carriers who would take her to the border with the EU, where she could apply for political asylum. Unfortunately, the girl got in touch with scammers who promised to take her to Poland for a considerable amount, but instead they brought her to Lugansk by roundabout ways and forests. There she was dropped off and abandoned.
Kobra spent some time in Lugansk and realized that she had no choice but to continue her journey through Russia. She got to Moscow, and from there she got to St. Petersburg. There, the girl again contacted some people who promised to send her to Europe. However, at the end of May 2022, while Kobra was waiting to leave, she and several other Afghans with whom she lived in a house at 7 Dvinskaya Street in St. Petersburg were detained by FSB officers. First, they were registered as witnesses in the case of giving a bribe. According to investigators, the carriers were going to pay the border guards so that the Afghans could leave the country without hindrance. However, later the St. Petersburg court found Cobra guilty of violating the regime of the state border.
A day later, she was charged with illegally crossing the border by a group of people by prior agreement and placed in St. Petersburg SIZO No. 5. Cobra spent almost a year in the pre-trial detention center. In May, at the next meeting on the extension of detention, the lawyers of the Afghan journalist managed to get a refusal to extend the detention. However, immediately after her release from the pre-trial detention center, a protocol was drawn up against her on violation of migration rules, the court found her guilty and sent her to the Temporary Detention Center for Foreign Citizens No. 1 (TSVSIG) in Krasnoye Selo, St. Petersburg.
In Russia, immediately after entering the pre-trial detention center, the journalist requested political asylum, but the inspector never came to her with a questionnaire, lawyers say.
If Russia refuses asylum to Kobra Hassani, she will be sent to her homeland in Afghanistan, where she could face criminal prosecution and mortal danger. When asked what awaits her at home, the girl replies: "Death and suffering, blackness and destruction."
