French journalists released on bail

Two French journalists arrested from their Karachi hotel on 16 December for a visa violation were finally granted bail by a Sindh high court judge on Wednesday, after an earlier application was rejected by a lower-court judge on 20 December. "They have been granted bail and will be released from prison later today,” Nafis Siddiqui, the journalists’ lawyer, told IRIN from the southern port city. "Bail has been set at 100,000 rupees [about US $1,800] each for the two men." Marc Epstein, a reporter, and his photographer, Jean-Paul Guilloteau, of the French news weekly L’Express were arrested from their up-market Karachi hotel on 16 December and face up to three years in prison for violating the Foreigners Act of 1946 by visiting the Quetta region in the southwestern province of Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan, without special permission from the government. Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, a local freelance journalist assisting the two as an interpreter/fixer, also arrested on 16 December, is said to have been detained at an unknown location in Karachi by the Federal Investigation Agency. In 2001, Epstein and Rizvi worked together before on a documentary on Pakistan’s Tribal Areas, which subsequently won a Diplomatic Press prize. Alarmed by their appearance before a lower-court judge on 20 December, when the two Frenchmen were taken away handcuffed after their bail application was rejected, the rights group Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) issued a press statement criticising the Pakistani government for ignoring the statements the two had made in custody. Epstein and Guilloteau had simply crossed the Quetta region to enter Afghanistan to report on reported Taliban activities, it said, pointing out that it was common knowledge that armed groups opposed to the Kabul government were active on both sides of the border. "These arrests and the possible criminal charges mark a new low in the growing assault on press freedoms in Pakistan," another watchdog group, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on Tuesday after reports indicated that the government was considering filing new charges against the two journalists, including one of "fabricating false evidence with a conspiracy to defame Pakistan". "Foreign journalists have now fallen victim to the same tactics of intimidation and harassment that the Pakistani government often uses against the local press," it added. Meanwhile, journalists associations campaigning for the release of the two Frenchmen and their Pakistani colleague had so far failed in their efforts to establish where and how Rizvi was being held, Qamarullah Chaudri, the former head of the Karachi Union of Journalists, told IRIN. "There is just no sign of him. No one has any idea whose custody he’s in or where he’s been kept. We urge the government to tell us his whereabouts," he said.