Calls mount for Taliban to free girls’ education activist

The Taliban have imposed restrictions on women’s rights since their takeover of Afghanistan (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)

Calls were mounting for the Taliban to free a girls’ education activist arrested earlier this week in Kabul, as a government minister defended the detention.

Matiullah Wesa, founder and president of Pen Path — a local nongovernmental group that travels across Afghanistan with a mobile school and library — was arrested in the Afghan capital on Monday.