QUETTA — A court in Pakistan cancelled bail for a journalist charged with treason for allegedly helping make a fake Taleban video with two French reporters, ordering him to be re-arrested, an official said yesterday. An anti-terrorism court in the southwestern city of Quetta made the ruling on Tuesday against the journalist, Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, after he failed to appear for a hearing, said Muzaffar Ahmed, assistant district attorney in Quetta. "He (Rizvi) had not been appearing in the case for the last three hearings and because of this he was deemed to be fleeing towards Waziristan hampering justice," Ahmed said. The court has issued non-bailable arrest warrants for Rizvi, he said. Abid Saqi, a lawyer for Rizvi, said the court rejected an application by Rizvi that he be granted adjournments in the case because he was sick. "We had filed a medical certificate that he (Rizvi) is seriously sick and he is unable to attend the proceedings," Saqi said.
| "Deathly ill, yer honor! Why he's not a candidate for so much as a hair-cut right now!" |
The lawyer, however, said he was unaware of Rizvi's whereabouts.
| Try the hospital. Look in-between the crates of grenades. |
Rizvi, a Pakistani, was released on bail in March after his arrest last December along with two French journalists, Marc Epstein and Jean-Paul Guilloteau. The Frenchmen, who worked for the French magazine L'Express, were sentenced to six months in jail for violating the terms of their visas and travelling to the southwestern Balochistan province without permission. But the pair were soon released and have since returned home.
| Where they're the darlings of the Left Bank crowd, natch. |
Rizvi faces trial over treason charges for allegedly helping the Frenchmen make a video in which purported Taleban fighters train in Pakistani territory. Pakistani authorities say the fighters were in fact Pakistani tribesmen posing as Taleban rebels.
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