A Sri Lankan judge on Wednesday freed two foreignials said. The two-member crew of France 24 were detained overnight at Ratgama, 105 kilometres (65 miles) south of the ca without any charges."
In Paris the government confirmed the news. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner "sends thanks to all those who contributed to the release, notably to the Sri Lankan authorities," a statement said.
The pair had been taken Tuesday before another judge in the island's south who ordered that they be handed over to the TID for further investigation. Sri Lanka's independent Free Media Movement (FMM) had called for their immediate release and accused the authorities of overreacting and suppressing the right to information.
A female journalist and TV cameraman from France 24 were filming a Tamil family visiting their detained relatives on Christmas Eve, the FMM said. The military had accused them of filming a military check point near the Boosa detention centre in the south of the island. "The FMM does not consider videoing a road block as a national security issue and expresses its serious concern of detaining a TV crew and a whole family on a minor incident," the media rights group said.
The Boosa detention centre was reopened recently by the military in the wake of mass arrests of minority Tamils as part of a crackdown against separatist Tamil Tiger guerr llas. Boosa was known as a notorious torture centre when Marxist rebels were detained there in the late 1980s. International media rights activists have described Sri Lanka as one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists to work in due to a worsening climate of violence and censorship.
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