PARIS, Dec 19: Reporters sans frontieres (RSF), the international journalists’ rights organization, has called for the release of two French journalists who have been in Pakistan working for the weekly newsmagazine L’Express.

According to RSF spokesman Vincent Brossel, RSF called on the Pakistani authorities to release the two men, reporter Marc Epstein and photographer Jean-Paul Guilloteau, who were arrested Tuesday in Karachi for violating regulations by travelling to Quetta near the western border with Afghanistan without a visa for the city.

Mr Brossel explained that the two men had chosen “not to request the special permits necessary to travel to Quetta because their investigative reporting required them to exercise discretion” with regard to their movements in their region.

RSF also voiced concern that there was no word on the whereabouts of Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, a Pakistani journalist who accompanied them to Quetta as their guide. It also said that the imposition of visa and travel restrictions on foreign reporters obstructed investigative journalism, and it urged the Pakistani government to review its rules regarding the provision of visas to the foreign news media.

The presence on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan of the two journalists — as well as apparently others from the French press — could be related to reported efforts to attempt an attack against Al Qaeda by France’s crack 250 COS special forces that have been deployed in and around Spin Boldak, patrolling the frontier that separates Afghanistan from Pakistan.