Rights groups call for journalist's release

The fate of a Pakistani journalist, arrested on 21 April as he tried to enter the country's tribal areas where an ongoing military offensive against Al-Qaeda and Taliban groups had gathered impetus, remains a mystery as rights groups called for his immediate release. Sami Yusafzai, a Newsweek correspondent, was arrested in Wana in the South Waziristan tribal area that borders Afghanistan, as he and Eliza Griswold, a freelance journalist from the United States, attempted to enter the tribal agency without special permission from the government. Yusafzai's driver, Mohammed Salim, was also arrested and his whereabouts also remain unknown. Griswold was detained briefly before being handed over to the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) department in Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) that borders Afghanistan. She was subsequently deported. A Pakistani government spokesman told IRIN on Thursday he had no clue about Yusafzai's whereabouts. "If, in fact, he and his driver have been held by Pakistan's intelligence services, as independent observers and international bodies suspect, they should be released forthwith," Ali Hasan, the Pakistan representative of the international human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IRIN from the eastern city of Lahore. "There has been a long history of Pakistan's intelligence agencies holding journalists without charge and in illegal detention. Human Rights Watch has condemned this in the past and will condemn it in this instance as well," Hasan said. "The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) is concerned about the growing intimidation and harassment of pressmen by both official and non-official agencies. And this harassment has increased over the past year," Kamila Hyat, the HRCP joint-director, told IRIN from Lahore. EXTREMELY CONCERNED Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), the international journalists' rights watchdog, said in a press statement on Wednesday that it was "extremely concerned" about Yusafzai's fate. "Despite repeated requests from Newsweek and Pakistani and international journalists, the authorities in Islamabad have refused to provide information about Yusafzai or his driver, Mohammed Salim," the press release said. "I am very concerned because it's been for two weeks that he is under secret detention, and we don't know exactly what is the situation and the condition of detention. The last local journalist arrested working for foreign media was ill-treated and tortured in detention," Vincent Brossel, who coordinates the RSF's Asia-Pacific desk, told IRIN. "Extra-officially we know that the intelligence services held him in Peshawar. There is no direct contact with him. Why, where and until when he will be detained remains uncertain," he added. "He was detained because he was travelling in the tribal areas with a foreign journalist, where the Pakistani authorities don't allow any foreign journalist to go without authorisation," Brossel explained. In a similar incident, Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, another local journalist, was arrested in December for allegedly accompanying two French journalists to a border area in the south-western province of Baluchistan that borders Afghanistan. Rizvi was arrested and charged with sedition and conspiracy, while the two Frenchmen, both employed by the weekly L'Express, were granted bail and allowed to leave for France within three weeks of their arrest. Rizvi was finally granted bail in late March and allowed to live in Islamabad, but will have to attend regular hearings in the southwestern city of Quetta. But Brossel said Yousafzai's actions did not merit an arrest. "He is an Afghan journalist, but he has been living in Pakistan for a long time. He is a respected journalist working for Newsweek. There is no reason to arrest him. He just paid the price for travelling with a foreign journalist," he stressed. HRW called upon the government of Pakistan to confirm or deny whether they had actually arrested Yousafzai, Hasan said. "If they deny the arrest, then they should make all attempts to produce him. If they have arrested him, then they should produce him in a court of law and charge him, or release him immediately," he asserted.