Anne Boher, a French journalist working for the Reuters news agency was briefly detained by Ivory Coast authorities and released without charge, Reuters said on Tuesday.
Boher was arrested on Monday in San Pedro, Ivory Coast’s second port city, and brought to Abidjan, the de facto capital also on the Atlantic coast, by a special plane in the evening. She was released on Tuesday, the news agency said.
Reuters chief news editor Anthony Williams said in London that the news agency was ”relieved and satisfied that the Ivoirian authorities have recognised that there was a misunderstanding and that our reporter was engaged purely in the pursuit of legitimate news gathering activities.”
”Reuters remains committed to covering the conflict in the Ivory and Coast fairly and objectively,” he added.
President Laurent Gbagbo’s government and police have targeted foreign journalists since the start of a September 19 uprising, accusing them of being partisan towards the rebels.
On Monday, the state-run RTI radio station reported Boher’s arrest and described her as a ”a spy for the MPCI”, the main rebel group, the Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast.
It said ”compromising documents” had been found in her possession.
Ivory Coast is a former French colony and France has troops in the country seeking to protect foreign nationals and keep apart the warring sides. – Sapa-AFP