Journalist detained in US despite visa

Washington: Six days ago, a Pakistani journalist on the run from Taliban militants landed in the United States holding a valuable key to sanctuary: a visa granting him the right to work for the Voice of America radio service for one year.

But Rahman Bunairee is in an immigration lock-up in Virginia after being detained upon arrival at Dulles International Airport.

"We are concerned and upset," said Joan Mower, a spokeswoman for VOA, which is funded by the US government. "We are trying to find out what happened and working to get it resolved with other government agencies."

Advocates expressed disbelief at the predicament facing Bunairee, 33, whose reports on Pakistani television and the Voice of America made him a target for the Taliban. Militants blew up his house and threatened him in recent months, according to officials at the government news service and the Committee to Protect Journalists, a media freedom group based in New York.

"His employer arranged to bring him to Washington so that he could continue his journalism in relative safety," said Bob Dietz of the Committee to Protect Journalists, who met with Bunairee in Pakistan in July. "US authorities must explain why they are holding a journalist with a valid US visa and release him immediately." Strict privacy laws prevent officials from discussing the case, said Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"Due to confidentiality and policies to protect the rights of certain noncitizens and nonnationals of the United States, ICE generally refrains from public comment," she said. "Our obligation to ensure the safety of the individual and the integrity of the process has to come first, before rumor and rhetoric."

The explanation for the detention of Bunairee may turn out to be simple. But for the moment, it is a mystery with the extra twist that he came here to work for a US government agency.

Depending on what he told inspectors at the airport, officials may have concluded he was seeking political asylum or was a potential political refugee.

Bunairee's advocates doubt he would have requested asylum. The journalist left his wife and four children behind in Pakistan. He wanted to return home, hoping that after a year the danger would have subsided, Dietz said.

"He gave no indication that he wanted to get out for good, that he was going to try to stay in the US," Dietz said. "He didn't want to separate from his family."

The US Embassy in Islamabad granted Bunairee a J-1 visa for him to work in Washington for VOA's Deewa Radio, which broadcasts in the Pashto language to the Pakistani-Afghan border region. He had worked as a stringer for the radio network since 2006, in addition to reporting as a Karachi-based correspondent for Pakistan's Khyber Television.

Bunairee's reporting took him frequently to his native Buner province in northwest Pakistan, a region that has been the scene of combat between the military and militants during the past year. Two days after he appeared on a talk show in July, armed men went to his home in Buner, ordered 11 of his relatives to leave and blew up the house. Bunairee moved his family to Karachi, but the threats and danger persisted. There were incidents in which gunmen climbed the wall of his bureau in Karachi when he was not there, Dietz said.

"I saw him in Islamabad in late July, and he was staying in a guest house and maintaining a very low profile," Dietz said. "You could say he was in hiding. He was trying to figure out what to do."