London Times THURSDAY JUNE 07 2001 Nepalese editor held for 'conspiracy'article FROM STEPHEN FARRELL IN KATHMANDU THE editor and two executives of a Nepali newspaper were arrested last night after printing Maoist claims that the royal massacre was ³a grave political conspiracy² orchestrated by the Government. Human rights campaigners condemned the arrests of Ubaraj Gimira, Editor of the Nepali-language daily Kantipurıs, Kailash Sirohiya, its managing director, and Binod Raj Gyawali, the director, who were all being held last night in a police station in central Kathmandu. Police told newspaper staff that they were to be questioned for sedition, the same day that Kantipur ran an editorial by the underground Maoist leader Dr Baburam Bhattarai urging the Army to stop protecting the new King Gyanendra and to join the people who oppose him. The official explanation for the deaths is not accepted by Maoist rebels, who began an insurgency in 1996. In Kantipur Dr Bhattarai claimed that the establishment ³stage-managed² explanations blaming Crown Prince Dipendra for the massacre and claimed that King Birendra was killed because he had made enemies within the ruling elite by refusing to use the Army against the Maoists. Guna Raj Luitel, a senior Kantipur journalist, who visited his colleagues last night said that they had no access to lawyers but had not been mistreated. He defended the decision to print the editorial, saying: ³We donıt support the Maoists. We are the media, it is our job to print the views of all sections of society.²
