LIBERIA - A team of journalists working for London-based Insight News Television have been charged with espionage after being arrested on Saturday night, authorities said.
The charges were filed after authorities reviewed their videotapes and found material that was "damaging" to the Liberian Government and the security of the state, Minister
of Justice Eddington Varmah said.
It was not immediately clear what punishment the journalists could face if convicted.
The team, two from Britain, one South African and one from Sierra Leone, were arrested at their Monrovia hotel.
Police Chief Paul Mulbah said earlier that during a search of the journalists' rooms, police found information that "raised eyebrows." He did not elaborate.
"We acted professionally and legitimately by first obtaining a court warrant before effecting the arrest," he said.
Before the arrests, staff from the Criminal Investigation Division had searched the rooms and taken away tapes containing material filmed during their nearly three-week stay in Liberia.
A senior police official had said they were taking the tapes to review them, and that the journalists would be called for questioning if anything sensitive was found.
An Insight Television official declined to comment, referring questions to the British Foreign Office. A Foreign Office spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Britain's honorary consul in Liberia had visited the imprisoned journalists. She said it was unclear why they had been arrested.
Liberian President Charles Taylor's regime has been frequently in the news recently over accusations by British, American and other officials that it has been the main conduit for diamonds smuggled out of Sierra Leone by that nation's brutal rebel army, the Revolutionary United Front.
Taylor, a former warlord in Liberia's seven-year civil war, which ended in 1996, has long-standing ties to the rebels.
