June 10, 2009
Arsalan Iftikhar | BIO
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com
Editor’s Note: Arsalan Iftikhar is an international human rights lawyer, founder of www.TheMuslimGuy.com and is a contributing editor for Islamica magazine in Washington.
Now that the ‘legal system’ in North Korea has ‘run its course’, it is imperative that the Obama administration help facilitate a diplomatic agreement, separate and exclusive of any nuclear non-proliferation discussions, to free American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee.
Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, both reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced after being accused of a ‘grave crime’ against the North Korean state, according to global media reports.
Their sentence: 12 years in a North Korean labor camp. Their families in the United States are now anxiously hoping the U.S. government can help negotiate a diplomatic rapprochement that will help bring the detained journalists home.
The San Jose Mercury News reported that concern about the women’s safety grew more intense when the rogue nation threatened to use nuclear weapons in a “merciless offensive” if provoked. Meanwhile, North Korea’s critics in the West — including John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — decried the capture as a “kidnapping” and an “act of state terror.”
According to the Boston Globe, both Ling and Lee were investigating a story for Current TV on alleged North Korean defectors to China when they were apprehended by North Korean soldiers on March 17. They were charged with crossing the border from China with intent to commit “hostile acts.” Still, for many within the international community, the circumstances of their arrest remain quite unclear. Human rights observers and members of the press were not allowed to attend their trial, and therefore it is hard to know if they actually crossed the border, or if they had even done so inadvertently.
Continue Reading Arsalan’s June 2009 CNN Column Here…
