WORLD_Foreign journalists released by Libya after six weeks' detention

Foreign journalists released by Libya after six weeks' detention
From: The Australian
May 20, 2011 12:00AM


Freed American freelance journalist Clare Morgana Gillis arrives at a Tripoli hotel after being released by Libyan authorities. Source: AP

THE Libyan government has released four foreign journalists, and a fifth reached freedom in Qatar after disappearing while on assignment in Syria, the latest reporters to be freed after being swept up while covering unrest in the Middle East.
Americans Clare Morgana Gillis and James Foley, along with British freelance reporter Nigel Chandler and Spanish photographer Manuel Varela, appeared at a Tripoli hotel after being released yesterday from six weeks' detention in Libya.

Earlier, Iranian-born Dorothy Parvaz, who also has US and Canadian citizenship and works for al-Jazeera television, arrived at her network's home base in Doha after being freed by Iran. All five were reported in good health.

"I've spoken to our son," said Diane Foley of Rochester, New Hampshire. "He's in good health, he's feeling very, very relieved. He's feeling very hopeful."

She said he told her the four were to be taken to the border with Tunisia, where they would cross out of Libya.

Three of the journalists - Gillis, who freelances for The Atlantic and USA Today; Foley, who writes for the Boston-based news agency GlobalPost; and Varela, who works under the name Manu Brabo - were detained on April 5 near the Libyan town of Brega. Chandler was detained separately.

They were freed a day after the Libyan government said it had given them a one-year suspended sentence on charges of illegally entering the country.

Parvaz, 39, who previously worked as a reporter and columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, disappeared soon after arriving in Syria on April 29 to cover anti-government protests; the Damascus government said on May 4 that she had been deported to Iran.

Though she was not harmed, Parvaz said while in Syria she heard the torture of Syrian civilians. "The beatings I heard almost around the clock were savage," she told al-Jazeera.

"The first night they took me out blindfolded and handcuffed into a courtyard, I'm fairly certain to scare me. I heard two separate interrogations and beatings. These young men . . . being beaten so harshly."

There was no word on the fate of another missing journalist, photographer Anton Hammerl, who disappeared in Libya about the same time as the four journalists who were released yesterday.

AP