Exactly three weeks after being detained in Libya by pro-Qaddafi fighters, freelance journalist Clare Gillis (A.B. ’98) made a second phone call home to her parents this morning.
Jane Gillis, Clare Gillis’s mother, wrote on the Facebook page dedicated to Clare’s release that Clare said she is still well. Within hours, several of Clare’s friends expressed statements of hope and joy on Facebook regarding the news.
Jane wrote that Clare had been given gifts of chocolate, perfume, books and cigarettes. “She sounded good and is eager to be released. Perhaps in a couple of days,” Jane wrote.
Clare had also been optimistic in her first phone call home last Thursday, telling her parents that she was in good condition and was hopeful about her release. But Saturday her father, Robert Gillis said, “We could not get a sense of why she thought that.”
No foreign diplomats, journalists, or humanitarian workers have been allowed to visit Gillis, according to TheAtlantic.com. Gillis was captured alongside two other freelance journalists, U.S. citizen James Foley and Spanish citizen Manu Brabo, on April 5 outside the eastern Libyan city of Brega while reporting on the Libyan conflict.
