He was arrested along with ten other journalists on trumped-up terrorism charges in 2001 and has been held incommunicado ever since, without access to his family or lawyers. Information obtained by RSF suggests that seven of these 11 journalists have already died in detention. According to the account of a former prison guard in 2010, the last time Isaak was seen alive, the journalists had been kept in inhuman conditions – handcuffed, isolated, and exposed to terrible heat.