2 Journalists Held for Murder in Laos

By: Daniel Lovering, Associated Press Writer (AP) Police in the communist country of Laos have arrested two European journalists and an American citizen for the murder of a Laotian villager, an official said Wednesday.

However, a journalism organization said the men were arrested while working on a story about Hmong ethnic rebels who have been fighting the government since 1975.

Frenchman Vincent Reynaud, Belgian Thierry J.L. Falise, and an American citizen of Laotian origin, Mua Naw Kari, were arrested on June 4 in the northeastern Xieng Khuang province, said Sodom Phetrasy, head of the Lao Foreign Ministry's press department.

The official Lao News Agency said the "three foreigners ... cooperated with bandits to kill a village security man of Khai village, Phoukhout district."

The three men are "currently in the investigation process," it said without elaborating. It gave no other details.

Sodom would not say where the men were being held.

Asked what punishment they face, Sodom said, "I don't know, but we will take measures to punish them under our law. It's too soon to say ... it will take some time."

A Paris-based press watchdog group, Reporters Without Borders, urged Laos on Tuesday to release the two journalists, who it said were arrested while doing a story in an area of the country where ethnic rebels are active.

The group had no immediate comment on Wednesday to the government's allegation that a security official was killed.

The two freelance journalists, both based in Bangkok, "were just exercising their right to inform international public opinion about the situation of the Hmong minority," the watchdog group said in a letter to Laotian Foreign Minister Lengsavat Somsavat.

Falise, a former Associated Press reporter in Paris, is a freelance journalist and photographer, and a regular contributor to the French news weekly L'Express and the Belgian media. He has covered the plight of ethnic minorities in remote parts of Asia, including India and Myanmar. Not much is known about Reynaud.

The Fact Finding Commission, a private U.S.-based organization close to the Hmong rebels, said Tuesday that three other Laotian citizens were arrested with the journalists.