February 1, 2002	Friday	Ziqa’ad 17, 1422

PARIS, Jan 31: Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF; Reporters without Borders), the French association that defends press freedoms around the world, has issued a communique in which it expressed its “concern” over the fate of US journalist Daniel Pearl, who is a resident of France, who disappeared last week in Karachi.

In the statement issued by Robert Menard, secretary-general of RSF, the association notes that one week after the disappearance of the correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, it is “especially worried about the conditions in which he is reportedly being held by his captors”, and “stresses that Pearl is a professional journalist, working on the paper for the past 12 years, and is in no way a spy for the CIA.”

RSF, which is also independent of any national government, and attempts to represent the interests of journalists around the world, appealed in its communique that he be released at once.

“It is totally absurd to make a journalist the scapegoat of his country’s foreign policy,” writes Menard, who notes that similar accusations had been made last October against two other reporters, Yvonne Ridley of the Sunday Express and Michel Peyrard of Paris Match, both of whom had been taken hostage by the Taliban.

RSF also says that it has “made contact with the Pakistani authorities through their embassy in Paris, so as to be kept up to date with investigations in Pakistan, and with the French authorities, since Pearl’s wife is French and he himself is a French resident.”

“France,” concludes Menard in his communique, “should make just as much effort to free Pearl as it did to obtain the release of Peyrard.”