NU Grad James Foley Released from Libya

James Foley and three other reporters were released from Libya

Four reporters held by the Libyan government for several weeks, including Northwestern University graduate James Foley and University of Chicago graduate Clare Morgana Gillis, were released Wednesday and moved to a Tripoli hotel.

Gillis, an American, said she and her three colleagues -- 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 photographe, 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.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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