Media News - Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Nigeria military detains French TV journalists

Soldiers guarding a city at the heart of ethnic and religious clashes in Nigeria detained and later threw out journalists working for a French television station trying to cover the ongoing unrest there, the reporters said. The military stopped TF1 journalist Jeremie Drieu, a videographer and local journalist Ahmad Salkida as they tried to work Sunday in the city of Jos, where thousands have been killed in recent years in violence pitting Christians against Muslims. When they attempted to ask for permission to film in an area of the city, soldiers there arrested the journalists and took them to a military command center, where they faced increasingly hostile interrogation, Drieu and Salkida said. The soldiers also went through some of the material they filmed, the journalists said. A military spokesman for the region, who only gave his name as Capt. Marcus, said Monday that the journalists "didn't get proper clearance" to work in the area. However, Drieu previously received federal accreditation from Nigeria's Information and Communication Ministry to work in the country — the only requirement for foreign journalists working in the country. Nigerian authorities have become increasingly sensitive to foreign reports coming from journalists working in the nation of more than 160 million as it has become beset by attacks by a radical Islamist sect and popular unrest. (AP)

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