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Libyan regime has also recently expelled reporters from the Daily Telegraph, CNN and Reuters The Guardian has another reporter expelled from Tripoli
David Smith of the Guardian was expelled from Libya after interviewing critics of Muammar Gaddafi. Photograph: Mohamed Messara/EPA The Guardian has been expelled from Tripoli for the second time in three weeks as the Libyan regime seeks tighter control over how the conflict is reported to the world. On Wednesday, I was ordered to pack my bags and leave the country because officials objected to an article in which I interviewed critics ofMuammar Gaddafi. The government demanded that the Guardian publish an apology "to the Libyan people", which it had itself prepared. The paper refused.
adrianblomfield adrianblomfield
I have been summarily expelled from #Libya for writing thistgr.ph/noiebG and given 45 minutes to pack up and go
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On Tuesday I walked out of the front gate unaccompanied, caught a taxi to a neighbourhood known for anti-Gaddafi dissent, interviewed some of its residents and reported my findings.
Within hours of the article appearing online, I was summoned to the media centre where an official held up a print-out of my article, the offending passages highlighted in yellow, and ripped it in half. He said: "Tomorrow you must leave Libya for ever! You can never come back, even when there is peace." It was explained that there was no record of me having left the hotel on Tuesday morning, therefore I must have sat in my room and made up all the quotations. But I was given one last chance: I could remain in Tripoli if I handed over my interviewees or if the Guardian published a retraction that denied their existence:
