Sunday, March 27, 2011

Libyan regime will release four journalists

The Libyan authorities have announced the release within 24 hours of four journalists of Al Jazeera, were arrested last week in western Afghanistan, reported the Qatari channel itself. Reporters are two journalists, one Tunisian and one Mauritanian, and a Norwegian and a British camera, said the chain did not provide their names.

Last night, the two journalists from the French agency AFP and Getty Images photographer captured by Libyan troops on Saturday while covering the fighting near the city of Ajdabiya, were released in Tripoli. The Libyan authorities had announced a few hours before Britain's Dave Clark, the Colombian-German and American Robert Schmidt Joe Radle (the latter Getty photographer) would be released.

They had also justified his detention on the grounds that they had entered illegally in the country and were in a military area where he carried out armed operations. Last Monday, four other correspondents, those of The New York Times were released after being captured on the Eastern Front on 15 March.

Previously three BBC journalists were detained and subjected to harassment and one of them to a mock execution when they tried to approach the besieged city of Al Zauiya near Tripoli, but later released. The British journalist "The Guardian" Gaith Abdul-Ahad, who was detained for fifteen days, was also released as his colleague Andrei Netto, a correspondent for Brazilian newspaper "O Estado de Sao Paulo", both caught in the coastal city of Sabratha on 2 March and later transferred to a prison located on the outskirts of Tripoli.

The regime of Col. Moammar Gadhafi has imposed very strict the restrictions on journalists in the capital, where they await to show them the victims who say the bombing has caused to enforce no-fly zone.

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