Libya frees 4 N.Y. Times journalists

The New York Times reported Monday that four of its journalists who were detained by the Libyan government while covering the conflict have been released.

The journalists - Beirut bureau chief Anthony Shadid; reporter Stephen Ferrell; and photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario - had been captured by Qaddafi forces in the eastern city of Ajdabiya last Tuesday.

The Libyan government released the four today into the custody of Turkish diplomats, who were accompanying them out of the country.

The four had crossed the Libyan border from Egypt without visas to cover fighting in the rebel-controlled eastern region of Libya.

They were experienced in war zones. Farrell, for one, was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2009 and was rescued by U.K. commandos.

The journalists are reporter Anthony Shadid, photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario, and a reporter and videographer, Stephen Farrell. In 2009, Farrell was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan and was rescued by British commandos.

Shadid had worked previously for The Associated Press, Washington Post and Boston Globe. He won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 2004 and 2010 for his coverage of Iraq.

Hicks, a former photographer for The Wilmington Star-News in North Carolina and the Troy Daily News in Ohio, was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2007 by Pictures of the Year International and won an Infinity award from the International Center of Photography in 2001.

Addario also has worked for National Geographic and Time magazine and was part of The New York Times team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. She won a MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius Grant, in 2009.