Libya releases 4 journalists
Freed American freelance journalist Clare Morgana Gillis, center left, and Spanish photographer Manu Brabo, far left, talk with Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim upon their arrival to a hotel where most of international media stays in Tripoli, Libya. (May 18, 2011) Credit: AP
Four foreign reporters held by the Libyan government for several weeks were released Wednesday and moved to a Tripoli hotel.
Clare Morgana Gillis, an American, said she and her three colleagues — James Foley, Manu Brabo and Nigel Chandler — were in good health.
The four appeared at the Rixos Hotel, which is housing foreign journalists assigned to Tripoli, a day after the Libyan government said it had given them a one-year suspended sentence on charges of illegally entering the country.
Gillis, a freelance journalist who wrote for The Atlantic and USA Today; Foley, who wrote for the Boston-based news agency GlobalPost; and Brabo, a Spanish photographer were detained on April 5 near the town of Brega.
Chandler, a British journalist, was detained separately.
Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim invited the four journalists to stay in Libya but said they would be escorted to the Tunisian border to exit the country if they so wished.
There was no word on the fate of photojournalist Anton Hammerl, who has South African and Austrian citizenships and went missing in Libya about the time the others were detained.
Gillis said she had not seen him.
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