News

Newsroom editor speaks about detainment

April 4, 2019 12:50 pm

New Zealand news agency, Newsroom’s co-editor Mark Jennings has clarified that they were not locked in a cell.

This is in contrary to international media reports saying the trio were locked up overnight.

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Jennings says they were interviewed by the CID at the Totogo Police Station in Suva and spent the night in a room off their main office.

He says the detainment came as a surprise as they didn’t feel that they had trespassed.

“We had actually finished our work here, we’ve been reporting on Freesoul’s big development on Malolo Island and we’d just come back to Suva to meet the landowners lawyer and we passed the Freesoul Office on the way and we went inside to see if we could ask Dickson Ping about the development. We were told to leave which we did and about an hour later the Police turned up at the lawyer’s office and took us to the police station.”

Jennings says the meeting with the Prime Minister went well.

“The Prime Minister said that this was not a good action by the Police. He thanked us for not making a big deal out of it. Apologized on behalf of the Fijian people which we accepted.

New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister, while welcoming the deeds of Bainimarama, says it was very difficult to ascertain what exactly happened.

He says it’s tough to say the three were detained because they were taken to a local restaurant and allowed to return.