Fears for Pakistan reporter's fate
From Islamabad Bureau Chief Ash-har Quraishi
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KARACHI, Pakistan (CNN) -- A local judge has given Pakistan's government two days to disclose the whereabouts of a Pakistani journalist who helped two French reporters get a story in a region where they lacked visas.
Khawar Mehdi Rizvi was detained on December 16 in Karachi, along with Marc Epstein and Jean-Paul Guilloteau, reporters from the French weekly L'Express.
Rizvi helped the two French journalists visit the province of Baluchistan, where they were working on a story about Taliban militants operating on the Pakistani side of the border.
The government, which is angry about the reporting, claims the story has been faked.
Rizvi has been held incommunicado, and Pakistani authorities have not said where he is or what his legal status is.
In court Tuesday, an attorney for Rizvi asked that the journalist's whereabouts be disclosed.
The court said the government must come up with an answer by Thursday after the deputy attorney general of Pakistan, Syed Zaki Mehmood, requested more time from the court to get an answer from officials in Islamabad on the journalist's whereabouts.
Meanwhile, Epstein and Guilloteau, who were released last week, started a committee to help obtain Rizvi's release.
The journalists were using Rizvi to assist them on a story about Taliban militants.
Islamabad accuses the journalists of using fake pictures.
Governmental sources told CNN Rizvi is being investigated for committing an act that would tarnish Pakistan.
Epstein said the three did not fake a report.
"Three of us were involved in reporting. Now there are only two of us ... None of us know what has happened to our colleague and friend Khawar Mehdi," Epstein told a press conference last week.
"This is happening in a country that claims to apply the law of habeas corpus, by which no one can be held for more than 48 hours without being charged," he said.
"We are beside ourselves with worry. We don't know where the man is, what is being done to him nor what he is accused of. It is completely unacceptable."
