Abuja, Nigeria, December
26, 2012--Nigerian authorities must immediately release two journalists who have
been detained since Monday and allow a third journalist who has fled into
hiding to return to his home and work freely, the Committee to Protect
Journalists said today.
In pre-dawn raids on
Monday, about 40 armed security agents arrested Aliyu Saleh, a reporter with Al-Mizan, a weekly Hausa-language
newspaper, and Musa Muhammad Awwal, the paper's editor, at their homes in
Rigasa in the northern state of Kaduna, according to news reports. The agents also confiscated the
journalists' phones and money and briefly
detained the journalists' wives, news reports said.