Journalist released

Liberian journalist Hassan Bility was released over the weekend after more than five months of detention due what news organisations said was especially pressure from the United States. Bility, editor of a private weekly, The Analyst, was arrested late June for allegedly collaborating with the rebels of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, an armed group fighting to remove President Charles Taylor from office. BBC quoted Information Minister Reginald Goodridge as saying Liberia had released him in its own "national interests". "It is difficult for a small country like us to say no," he said. According to Goodridge, Bility took a Ghana Airways flight out of the country and they had no idea where he was now. The important thing had been to make sure the journalist left Liberia because of people's anger at what he and his conspirators had done, Goodridge added. "Hassan Bility was a terrorist involved in an Islamic fundamentalist war," he said, adding that he had not been released because of humanitarian concerns. United States Ambassador John William Blaney and embassy officials turned out at Roberts International Airport, 45km south of the capital, Monrovia, to see Bility leave, BBC said. Late October, Taylor announced that Bility and two fellow detainees would be freed, after they "signed a statement acknowledging that they would be rearrested in the event of any violations". The two other men were arrested around the same time with Bility. All the three had been held incommunicado. They never appeared in court although judges had ordered the state to produce them. The US and human rights organisations had tirelessly appealed for their release.