Foreign journalists freed

A high court judge allowed two French journalists to go free on Monday - two days after a lower court sentenced them to a six-month prison term for violating their visas - following a successful appeal, according to their lawyer. "It is all over. After hearing our appeal, the judge has ordered the two journalists released. The sentence is finished," Nafis Siddiqui, the counsel for the two Frenchmen, told IRIN from the southern port city of Karachi. Reporter Marc Epstein and photographer Jean-Paul Guilloteau of the French news weekly L'Express were arrested in their Karachi hotel on 16 December on charges of violating the Foreigners' Act of 1946. They were accused of visiting the Quetta region in the southwestern province of Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan, without special permission from the government. A third man, Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, a local journalist working with the two as an interpreter/fixer, was also detained. He remains in custody. On Saturday, a lower-court judge sentenced the two men to six months each in prison, but suspended the sentence for a week to allow an appeal to be lodged in the high court. A fine imposed by the lower court, however, had been doubled, Siddiqui said. "The fine has been increased to Rs. 200,000 (US $3,615) from one hundred thousand rupees (US $1,807). As soon as they have paid the fine, they will be allowed to receive their passports and will be able to leave," he explained. "They are in the process of paying the fine right now. I think they might leave tonight," Siddiqui added. An official from the watchdog NGO, Human Rights Watch (HRW), however, said that the arrests of Epstein and Guilloteau had been "deeply worrying". "We are of the view that there was a dual purpose to the arrests: it was meant to send a message to the international press corps that free movement is not acceptable to the Pakistani government and, more importantly, to local Pakistani journalists collaborating with international press bodies, that there is no guarantee of immunity from coercion and intimidation," Ali Hassan, HRW's Pakistan representative, told IRIN from the eastern city of Lahore. "We call for the immediate release of Khawar Mehdi Rizivi, who has been held without charge, in contravention of international and Pakistani law," he stressed.