It was 2003 when two French journalists Marc Epstein and Jean-Paul and one Pakistani journalist Khawar Rizvi were held by Pakistani security agencies in Balochistan. The French journalists belonged to the French weekly L Express and were here trying to make a video film of a fake Taliban training camp near Pak-Afghan border. All the so-called Taliban characters that appeared in the video taking weapons training actually belonged to a local village and were hired by the French men on high wages. One of the characters, who was playing the role of a Taliban commander was an Imam of a mosque in Rawalpindi. He said he had been asked to play the role of 'Mullah Malang' in the film, which was shot at Qila Abdullah in Balochistan near the Pak-Afghan border. The project had to be aborted because of intervention of Pakistani security forces at the eleventh hour otherwise we can only imagine the effect that video would have created if it had been aired. I don't know why but when I saw the video about Swat flogging recently, I felt the foreign spin masters are still busy making fake footages. The girl who was supposedly flogged has denied that such an incident happened and so have the local people. Let us not forget the fact that in 2001, well-known British journalist Cristina Lamb was externed from Pakistan because she was trying to make a fake ticket of Osama Bin Laden from Quetta. -ZULFIQAR KHAN, Islamabad, via e-mail, May 9.