"I hope the Government of Pakistan will display democratic tendencies, respect human rights and press freedom," he said on the phone from his home in Islamabad. He said that although the Government had reserved the right to proceed against him in future, the Supreme Court of Pakistan had ordered that the Government cannot proceed against him with the same charges levelled in the current case.

Sethi knew little of the situation in Kargil, having been cut off from all the world news since May 8, when he was picked up from his home by the police. "I can offer no comment except that India should accept Pakistan's offer of peace and move towards coolingtempers," he said. He is aware of the support he got from friends in Pakistan and elsewhere and said that he hoped that this would send out a message to all human rights groups all over the world to support press freedom in whichever country it is threatened.

He will have quite a few pieces to pick up on Friday though. The Friday Times website was attacked and destroyed and though one edition of the paper was brought out, it was not allowed to be sold. Sethi said the newspaper would continue to be brought out as fearlessly as it always had been.

Sethi reiterated that he had not been picked up by the Inter-Services Intelligence (for whose professional interrogation abilities he had nothing but the highest praise) because of "two very sharp editorials against Nawaz Sharif's family and the Ehtesab Bureau Chief Saifur Rahman and because I had spoken to the BBC for a documentary they were making". He said Rahman, in fact, had called him and told him he might be part of an international conspiracy toundermine Pakistan. "I told him not to be silly and that was that." But then Sethi says: "I went off to India to deliver the Kewal Singh Memorial Lecture where Pakistan High Commissioner Ashraf Jehangir Qazi only said that he was disappointed at how cynical I sounded."

"In fact, he had taken kudos for me," recalls Sethi, "and taunted the Indians, saying that no Indian would have had the guts to say all this in Pakistan." But when he came back, he was told by Rahman that the Government was very angry with him. The next he knew, he was in prison. The Government had exploited his out-of-context remark in Delhi to pin charges of treason against him when the fact was that it was really taking out its anger at Sethi for writing critical editorials about it's performance, he said.