May 17, 2002	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 4, 1423

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PARIS, May 16: Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) says that its local correspondent in Pakistan was able to visit Amardeep Bassey, the British journalist of Indian origin who was arrested six days ago, and who, this morning was transferred to Peshawar “for further questioning,” together with his two guides.

According to an RSF despatch published in Paris on Thursday afternoon, Bassey, a reporter for the British newspaper Sunday Mercury, is “being held in a military area in the centre of Peshawar,” and is to “be seen by police and members of Pakistan’s secret services (ISI).”

The RSF’s local correspondent in Pakistan, Iqbal Khattak, told the Paris headquarters of the international journalists’ rights organization that he had been able to speak to Bassey “in his prison cell in Landi Kotal on Wednesday.

Bassey told RSF’s correspondent, “I am OK, don’t worry. I am in good hands; not those of the authorities of course, but of the people who are with me here in the jail ( ). My Pakistani guides, and their families, are my only hope in overcoming these difficult moments.”

The British journalist confirmed that he had not been ill-treated. “They asked me very detailed questions,” he told Khattak. “Sometimes the same question for several hours ( ). They asked me when I last travelled to India and the name of my village.” Bassey is a British citizen whose family is of Sikh origin.