Four foreign reporters held by the Libyan government for several weeks have been released and moved to a Tripoli hotel.

American reporters Clare Gillis and James Foley, Spanish photographer Manu Brabo and British journalist Nigel Chandler were freed on Wednesday. A day earlier, a judge gave them a suspended one-year sentence on charges of entering the country illegally. Gillis told reporters that she and her colleagues were all fine. The four were detained on April 5th near the town of Brega.

Moussa Ibrahim said, "The four foreign journalists are safe, are healthy, they have been released. They have been just fined for entering the country illegally. They are with us here at this very hotel. They talked briefly to the journalists and we told them that they can stay and work legally in this country, if they like that, otherwise we can help them leave to see their families. They chose to leave and we are helping them tomorrow to go to the Tunisian border and go back home."