1. I thank you very much for publishing on 12 January 2007 in extenso my letter dated 30 January 2007. You were also kind enough to communicate to me the reason for the delay and I found it quite reasonable and acceptable.

2. What I do find most objectionable and therefore unacceptable are the observations made by Miss Deepa Bhookhun. First, she states that “L’Express maintains the veracity and accuracy of the facts contained in the article published on the 29th December 2006.” She then immediately explains that “the article was based on the findings of the Human rights Commission, a copy of which, I saw (sic) with my own two eyes.” Incidentally, I presume that she not only saw the copy, but that she also read it with at least one eye and with an intelligent mind. To see a book or a copy of a document is not at all the same thing as to read it.

3. The article of Miss Bhookhun states that the NHRC did not refer the matter to the DPP. I showed Miss Bhookhun the original letter (and I left a copy thereof with her) I received from the NHRC and therein it is stated that the matter has been referred to the DPP. Is it stated in the findings seen by your journalist that the matter has not been referred to the DPP? Well, why then does not Miss Bhookun publish the relevant quote from her copy of the findings? Why does not Miss Bhookhun quote from the official letter I received from the NHRC? Indeed, why does not L”Express publish in toto the short letter in which the NHRC informed me of its conclusions. Has Miss Bhookhun bothered to check with the NHRC if the matter has been referred to the DPP or not? If yes, what was the outcome of her query? If not, why not? I suspect strongly she has not, but it is not too late for her to do so. I am enclosing once again a copy of the official letter from the NHRC and I formally request that your newspaper should publish it so that your readers can assess the “veracity and accuracy of the facts” written by Miss Bhookhun and “maintained” by l’Express, and therefore by you as Editor in Chief.

4. I will mention another inaccuracy of lesser importance, but nevertheless indicative of her carelessness with facts, a carelessness that you seem to endorse: Miss Bhookhun wrote that I was “visiting” (rendait visite) my client who was supposedly at the MCIT office in Curepipe. I was not visiting and I wrote that my client Ajaree and I arrived together, traveling from Port Louis to Curepipe. Indeed several press reports at the time correctly stated that Ajaree had surrendered to the MCIT accompanied by me. How could I be visiting him when he had not yet been arrested by the police? Yet, Miss Bhookhun and L’Express still “maintain” the “veracity and accuracy” that I was allegedly visiting (“rendait visite”) my client. Do the findings of the NHCR on which her facts are based show that I was visiting or that I had accompanied my client? Again, L’Express has the responsibility to quote from the findings so that readers can know its true contents. I doubt very much would be very much surprised if the findings of the NHRC contain such a factual error, albeit a minor one. The simple truth is that Miss Bhookhun, in utter disregard for simple facts, has simply imagined that I was visiting my client and does not have the humility to acknowledge a simple mistake of fact. Such an attitude, if maintained too long, becomes dangerously close to dishonesty. I cannot understand why L’Express and its editor in chief cannot simply acknowledge a mistake of fact on at least this point instead of stubbornly defending an imaginary “veracity.

5. More importantly and quite unacceptably, Miss Bhookhun writes: “Mr. Bibi takes it upon himself to state that SP Raddhoa was the one who gave us a copy of the findings. We leave him the responsibility of this statement. Jean Claude Bibi will no doubt appreciate that we are under our obligation to divulge our sources to him.” I have to refer your readers to paragraph 2 of my letter as therein at paragraph 2 I stated categorically that Miss Bhookhun herself explained to me she had received the findings by fax from SP Raddhoa. She then told me they had disappeared from her desk. No where in her observations does she deny this categorical affirmation of mine. I can add and I do add that she also agreed and she promised to phone Raddhoa to get another copy from him “without any problem’. Has Miss Bhookhun forgotten what was written in the SMS messages and the phone calls we exchanged in respect of her efforts to obtain another copy from Raddhoa and forward it to me? I can understand that Miss Bhookhun is now regretting what she said and what she wrote. She is entitled to have regrets but she is not ethically entitled to obfuscate the truth.

6. When I read Miss Bhookhun’s article on or about 14 January 2007 I had no idea it was based, as she subsequently explained, on findings of the NHRC leaked to her. I simply phoned Miss Bhookhun to point out one major error, namely that she had written that the matter had not been referred to the DPP whereas, as I told her, the NHRC has informed me of the opposite in an official letter that was shown to her. It was Miss Bhookhun herself who, in the very first phone conversation with me on the subject (and there were several more as well as several SMS messages), honestly explained that her article was based on findings faxed to her by SP Raddhoa after he had first phoned her. I expressed my amazement that Raddhoa had managed to obtain a copy of findings that Chairman Seetulsing always insists must stay secret for reasons that are also kept secret. I read over the phone to Miss Bhookhun the short letter from the NHRC and she was astonished and we both wondered whether Raddhoa had sent her something authentic or some thing incomplete or something truncated. Miss Bhookhun took the view it was most likely an authentic document as the findings had three pages and contained the signatures of four members of the Commission. She also said it was unlikely that Raddhoa would dare to take the risk of faxing a forged or fabricated document. I agreed with her assessment but told her we could not be sure Raddhoa had sent her everything and that, alternatively, it was theoretically possible that the NHRC would write up something in its findings and write something different in its letter to me. We were therefore both keen to check the document she said Raddhoa had faxed and we were eager to meet and compare what Raddhoa had sent with the official letter I received from the NHRC. A first appointment was arranged in Port Louis but Miss Bhookhun could not attend and, subsequently, she asked me to come to L’Express headquarters at Riche Terre.

7. These are accurate facts and there are several SMS messages between us to support this account and I do not have records of our phone conversations as I do not secretly tape friendly conversations. It is therefore worse than mystifying to tell readers that JC BIBI should be careful when he states that Raddhoa faxed the findings to Miss Bhookhun whilst cynically forgetting that it was Miss Bhookhun herself who spontaneously volunteered to give me such unsolicited information about her source (and I trustingly believed what she said and I still do believe she spoke the truth about Raddhoa sending the fax). Further, it is really a wretched attempt to confuse your readers by reminding them that L’Express has no obligation to reveal its sources to me as if I had ever requested or demanded that Miss Bhookhun should name the person who provided her with the findings. Anyway, how was I ever to know that she received the findings in three pages by fax unless she herself had told me so? Is there not total veracity and accuracy in the fact that Miss Bhookhun and I met at Riche Terre to compare the findings faxed by SP Raddhoa and the NHRC’s letter? Was it not agreed that she would give me a copy of the findings and I would give her a copy of the letter? Is there not veracity and accuracy in the fact that I had explained on more than two occasions to Miss Bhookhun that my Counsel, Mr. Rex Stephen, was contemplating legal proceedings against the NHRC before the Supreme Court and that it would be useful for him to have a look at these findings she said had been faxed by Raddhoa? Is it not true that she looked around for the document for some ten seconds and then, regretfully announced she could not find it? Further, did she not then immediately undertake to obtain another copy from Raddhoa and then fax it to me? So what is all this mumbo jumbo about me being the person responsible for stating that Raddhoa is the source? What is this patronizing rigmarole about having no obligation to reveal the sources of L’Express to me?

8. I cannot now help wondering if you, as Editor in Chief, have been told the truth or enough of the truth in this whole affair. Your readers are certainly entitled to know the truth even if Miss Bhookhun is clearly reluctant to give them all the information she gave me and I gave her. Why no importance whatsoever is attached to what is written in the official letter from the NHRC that has not disappeared? I have no qualms about it being published even if its contents may seem adverse to my interests and even if I disagree with what I consider to be its ludicrous logic. Your readers and the public at large are entitled to know the truth and to read the official conclusions of the NHRC. The journalist has the heavy responsibility to report the truth, including the truth about her/his own mistakes when they do occur. Perhaps Miss Bhookhun has recently considered it was a mistake to inform me it was Raddhoa, a party in the proceedings before the NHRC, who faxed her said findings. Maybe it was a mistake, but she cannot correct her mistake by distancing herself from the truth, or worse, by preventing your readers to come near the truth. And her pompous attempt to insinuate that I am the one responsible for blaming Raddhoa is definitely over the top: it is cunning but not courageous to cover up one’s mistakes by passing the buck to someone else: I was not the one who bandied Raddhoa’s name as the source of the NHRC’s findings. Miss Bhookhun needs not worry about Raddhoa. He is doing fine and he has more than enough protection for the time being. She should be more concerned to understand the complexity of the situation she has unwittingly created by not taking into account the contents of the letter from the NHRC. But I suppose that would be asking too much.

9. It should be obvious by now that Miss Bhookhun is no longer in a position to speak enough the truth, never mind the whole truth, to the readers of L’Express. She has boxed herself in a less than an intelligent corner and yet, seemingly, she has managed so far to keep some support from her editor even though, quite interestingly, she has not denied in her observations any of the contents of paragraphs 2, 5 and 6 of my letter addressed to the Director of Publishing. It is logically possible to maintain the veracity and accuracy of all the facts her article without rebutting what I have put forward. She does not even attempt to rebut what I state but wraps herself with a general declaration that the “veracity and accuracy” of the article is maintained. Either her article is correct and my contentions are therefore false or my contentions are true and she is taking a large number of readers for a ride that is neither pleasant nor free from intellectual dishonesty.

10. … May I reiterate my formal request that you should at least publish the official letter I received from the NHRC (and not by fax from SP Raddhoa) for the information of your readers. It must be established once and for all whether or not the NHRC referred the matter to the DPP. I will quote anew its last sentence, even though I am the first to concede that it is not a gem of clarity:

“However, the matter has been referred to the Director of Prosecutions for consideration when the DPP’s Office would decide whether to prosecute B. I. Ajaree in the Bijoulux case.”

Jean Claude Bibi

OUR REPLY

<B>Nothing more to add</B>

It is becoming increasingly difficult to get the point Mr Bibi is trying to make, if ever there is a point to his lengthy letters. Ours, on the other hand, has been emphatically made; Mr Bibi should take the matter up with the Human Rights Commission and not try to get them to react through us. As far as we are concerned, there is nothing left to be said, nothing more to add.

This is called closure.

<B> Deepa BHOOKHUN</B>