French E3 Reporters Detained and Deported

This was just pointed out to me by a friend where 2 different groups of French reporters on 2 different days had similar apprehension, treatment, and deportation when they tried to attend the E3 confrence in LA. It seems that for some reason 2 of them make it through immigration and the 3rd was told they could not enter the country. When their colleagues protested all three were detained, taken to the IMS where they were jailed overnight, interrogated, and fingerprinted before being forcably repatriated to their original countries.

From the "Reporters without Borders" webpage story.

Reporters Without Borders today protested against the detention of six French journalists on arrival a week ago at Los Angeles international airport to cover a video games trade show and their forcible repatriation after being held at the airport for more than 24 hours.

"These journalists were treated like criminals - subjected to several body searches, handcuffed, locked up and fingerprinted," Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard complained in a letter to the US ambassador to Paris, Howard Leach.

You can read all about the situation here.

Commentary: While I'm no fan of how France handled the whole Iraq situation I'm still a firm believer in people's rights and that of the press. Obviously nobody will know what really went down but if the reporters were in order then they were treated very unjustly. Word of the wise here is dont protest at a airport I guess :)