French journalists still in jail

Two French journalists arrested on 16 December on charges of visiting the Quetta area without official permission, have had their bail application turned down. "I obtained the order for the rejection of bail about an hour ago. I've had a look at it and will be filing bail applications for both these men tomorrow," Nafis Siddiqui, counsel for the two detained journalists, told IRIN from the southern port city of Karachi on Monday. Marc Epstein and Jean-Paul Guilloteau, reporter and photographer, respectively, for the French news weekly L'Express, face up to three years in prison for violating the Foreigners Act of 1946 after they admitted visiting the city of Quetta in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan, which borders on Afghanistan, without special permission from the government. Epstein and Guilloteau travelled to Pakistan on journalist visas on 7 December with permission only to visit the capital, Islamabad, Karachi and the eastern city of Lahore. Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, a Pakistani journalist working with the two Frenchmen in the capacity of a "fixer" was also arrested on 16 December and is said to be held in an unknown location in Karachi by the Federal Investigation Agency. Both Epstein and Rizvi have worked together before, most notably on a documentary on the situation in Pakistan's Tribal Areas, which won Epstein the Diplomatic Press Prize. After their appearance in a Karachi court on 20 December, the two had been taken handcuffed to a prison to await trial, Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF), the journalists' rights watchdog, said in a statement, adding that the Pakistani authorities were taking no account of the statements made by the two. "Epstein and Guilloteau simply crossed the Quetta region in order to enter Afghanistan and report on the activities of Taliban groups there," the RSF statement said. "Everyone knows that armed groups opposed to the Kabul government are active on either side of the border," RSF said in a letter to Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, the Pakistani prime minister. "We regret that the Islamabad government imposes this kind of sanction on foreign journalists who are just doing their job of providing information on the issue," it added. The government, meanwhile, was considering presenting additional evidence against the French journalists and their Pakistani associate on charges of conspiring to defame the state of Pakistan and fabricating evidence, Dawn, a respected English-language broadsheet, said, quoting sources. "We are examining all possibilities in this regard," Tasneem Noorani, the interior ministry secretary, was reported to have said. However, Siddiqui said the charge-sheet he had seen bore no mention of any charges other than contravening the 1946 Foreigners Act. "Bail should be a matter of right for these two," he said. "They travelled to Pakistan on valid travel documents, but the section of the law they have been charged under applies to those people who enter Pakistan illegally. That doesn't hold true for my clients: they came to Pakistan legally before they sought to travel elsewhere." Siddiqui added that the authorities had no basis for detaining the journalists further. "The police had requested their physical remand till 24 December, but the charge-sheet was presented on 19 December. That means the investigation is over and there is no further justification for them to be detained any further," he asserted.