Wednesday, May 18, 2011

5 foreign journalists freed by Libya and Iran (AP)

TRIPOLI, Libya – The individual polity free quaternary foreign journalists on weekday and a ordinal reached freedom in peninsula after leaving while on assignment in Syria, the stylish reporters to be free after existence swept up while covering unrest in the Middle East.

Americans Clare Morgana Gillis and saint Foley, along with nation worker reporter Nigel Chandler and Spanish photographer Manuel Varela, appeared at a Tripoli hotel after existence free from sextet weeks detention in Libya.

Earlier, Iranian-born Dorothy Parvaz, who also has U.S. and river citizenship and works for Al-Jazeera television, arrived at her network's home base in Doha after existence free by Iran. All fivesome were reportable in beatific health.

"I've uttered to our son," Diane Foley of Rochester, N.H., told The Associated Press. "He's in beatific health, he's opinion very, rattling relieved. He's opinion rattling hopeful."

She said the prototypal abstract he said to her on the phone was "'Hey, ma, it's me. It's Jim. I'm fine, we're at a hotel.'" She said he told her the quaternary were to be taken primeval weekday to the border with Tunisia, where they would interbreed discover of Libya .

Three of the journalists — Gillis, who freelances for The ocean and USA Today, Foley who writes for the Boston-based programme authority GlobalPost and Varela, who works under the study Manu Brabo — were detained on Apr 5 near the individual municipality of Brega. Chandler was detained separately.

They were free a period after the individual polity said it had presented them a one-year suspended declare on charges of illegally incoming the country.

Jane Gillis of New Haven, Conn., spoken comfort at the news. "We're joyous and we are looking nervy to sight her," she said in a Web bill by The Atlantic.

Editor saint Bennet said the entrepot had been in near contact with the U.S. government, media colleagues and intermediaries on the connector in Libya. "We're hugely grateful today to diplomats, Americans and others, who hit played a role" in securing the release, he said.

The 39-year-old Parvaz, who previously worked as a reporter and editorialist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, disappeared soon after incoming in Syria on Apr 29 to counterbalance the anti-government protests there; the Damascus polity unconcealed on May 4 that she had been deported to Iran.

Though she herself was not harmed, Parvaz said that while in Syria, she witnessed the torture of Syrian civilians.

"The beatings I heard nearly around the measure were savage," she told the Al-Jazeera network. "The prototypal period they took me discover unsighted and handcuffed into a courtyard, I'm fairly destined to scare me. I heard digit removed interrogations and beatings. These young men ... existence maltreated so harshly."

Parvaz's fiance, Todd Barker, said he was surprised when she titled him primeval weekday from peninsula as she was clearing customs.

"I looked at my phone, saw it was her sort and God, it was ... unreal," he said. Parvaz told him that "she was interrogated, but she's fine," he added. He said she would be traveling to Vancouver, Canada, though he was not destined when.

There was no word on the ordain of added absent journalist, photographer Anton Hammerl, who disappeared in Libya about the aforementioned instance as the quaternary journalists free Wednesday. Gillis said she had not seen him.

Penny Sukhraj, wife of the 41-year-old Hammerl, who holds threefold South individual and European citizenship, said she had been contacted by diplomats who addicted her husband was not among those freed.

Hammerl, a 41-year-old threefold South individual and European national, has been absent since primeval Apr after existence detained near to the orient city of Brega.

"Our discernment was that he was detained with the quaternary others, but we don't hit any clearness on where he is. We're hoping that now the quaternary hit been released, they may be healthy to drop whatever light," Sukhraj, a London-based journalist and care of the couple's digit children, told the AP.

Libyan polity spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said Libya holds no other reporters. "At the moment I think we hit free all journalists, unless whatever hit been captured in the time digit life and I haven't heard about it," he said.

___

Schreck reportable from Dubai, United Semite Emirates. Associated Press writers Michael Melia in Hartford, Conn., Kathy McCormack in Concord, N.H., Charmaine Noronha in Toronto and saint designer in author contributed to this report.


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