Huma Aamir Malik, Special to Arab News

KARACHI, 11 January 2004 — A Karachi court yesterday sentenced two French journalists to six months in prison for violating visa stipulations after they traveled to an area near the Afghan border.

The judge later suspended the jail sentence for one week, allowing reporter Marc Epstein and photographer Jean-Paul Guilloteau to walk free as they prepared to file an appeal against the verdict.

The journalists, who were working for the French magazine L’Express, were, however, ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 rupees ($1,750) each without delay, defense lawyer Nafees Sadiqui told reporters.

Judge Nuzhat Ara Alvi ruled that the men had violated Pakistan’s immigration laws by traveling to the southwestern city of Quetta without permission. Both men had pleaded guilty to the offense.

Police say the Frenchmen’s visas only allowed travel to Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

Pakistani officials have also said the men were involved in making an allegedly fake documentary showing Taleban rebels sneaking into Pakistan from Afghanistan, but they were not charged with any other offense. The two journalists were arrested Dec. 16 in Karachi along with a Pakistani journalist, Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, who was working with them and is still in custody. He has yet to be charged.

Chief prosecutor Mahmood Alam Rizvi said he had sought three years in jail for the French journalists.

After the sentencing in the morning, the defense lawyer filed an application to the judge in the Karachi court requesting that she review her verdict and just impose a fine because the Frenchmen were journalists, and had not gone to Quetta with any bad motive.

In Pakistan, if a sentence of less than one year is imposed, a defense lawyer can submit a request before the same judge to reconsider the verdict and impose a fine instead. The judge decided on the one-week suspension of the sentence after considering the application.

The same court had granted bail to the Frenchmen on Dec. 24, after they had started a hunger strike to protest their arrest. They have said they were only doing their job as journalists.

State media in Pakistan have reported that the journalists were planning a report on how Taleban rebels had set up training camps inside Pakistan near Quetta, which lies about 50 km (30 miles) from Afghanistan. State PTV network broadcast video apparently confiscated from the Frenchmen showing one of them photographing armed men. The report claimed the armed men were not Taleban and were just posing to earn some money.

Pakistan has rejected criticism that it is not doing enough to stop supporters of the former hard-line regime from launching attacks in Afghanistan and then retreating to Pakistani territory.

The Paris-based journalists’ rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called on the French Foreign Ministry to “put its foot down” over the jailing of the French.

RSF has previously demanded all three journalists be released.

— Additional input from agencies