From Committee to Protect Journalists

New York, April 27, 2004: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the ongoing detention of Sami Yousafzai, a stringer for the magazine Newsweek who was arrested last week at a military checkpoint in Bannu, a town in the North-West Frontier Province near the tribal areas in western Pakistan, according to local news reports.

Yousafzai was traveling by car with American freelance journalist Eliza
Griswold on April 21 when they were stopped at a military checkpoint in
Bannu. Yousafzai, Griswold, and the car's driver, Mohamed Salim, were then
arrested and taken away separately for questioning, according to local
reports. Security officers in Peshawar, the regional capital, held Griswold
for questioning for several hours and later released her. Yousafzai and
Salim have not been heard from since their arrest.

The news wire agency Pakistan Press International reported Griswold's arrest
on April 22, claiming that the Pakistani "government has foiled another plot
woven by Western media to malign the country at an international level," and
that Yousafzai was "taken into custody by the security officials."

Yousafzai, an Afghan national, is a former correspondent for the
English-language daily The News. Local journalist groups and human rights
groups issued statements yesterday and today protesting against Yousafzai's
ongoing detention and demanding his release.

In December 2003, another Pakistani journalist who had worked with foreign
journalists, Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, was arrested and secretly detained for
several weeks before being charged with sedition, conspiracy, and
impersonation. Rizvi was released on bail on March 27, but the charges
against him, which carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, still
stand.

"We are outraged by the detention of our colleague Sami Yousafzai," said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. "Yousafzai should be released immediately"

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