H.E. Pervez Musharraf
President
Office of the President
Islamabad
Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Fax: (011.92.51.2) 922-4206
Your Excellency:
The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) protests the secret detention of Sami Yousafzai, a stringer for Newsweek . Yousafzai is being held without any charges, without the right to see a lawyer or members of his family, and without even an official admission that he is being held.
Yousafzai is an Afghan national. He was arrested on April 21 at a military check-point between the North West Frontier Province and the tribal areas. He was arrested along with the car@quot;s driver, Mohamed Salim, and an American freelance journalist, Eliza Griswold. Griswold was released after being questioned for several hours, but the two men have not been seen since.
We understand that after being held incommunicado in Peshawar, where he was extensively interrogated, Yousafzai was moved on May 17 to North Waziristan Agency. That means he could be tried under tribal jurisdiction, where defendants are regularly denied legal representation.
Pakistan has a troubling record of harassing, arresting and even beating journalists. Their equipment is sometimes confiscated. They are generally discouraged from carrying out the normal duties of a journalist. Only two weeks ago, several Pakistani journalists were arrested when they tried to cover the return to Lahore of the exiled politician, Shahbaz Sharif.
The OPC, which has been defending the rights of journalists around the world for nearly seven decades, finds it difficult to accept that a country so closely allied with the aims and principles of democracies should pay so little regards to the basic rights of the press. We urge you, Your Excellency, to signal your commitment to free expression by securing the immediate release of Sami Yousafzai and Mohamed Salim.
Respectfully yours,
Jeremy Main
Kevin McDermott
Freedom of the Press Committee