The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on the government of Bahrain to release four journalists arrested while reporting on the fifth anniversary of 2011 protests.
According to a statement from the family, one of the four has been identified as freelancer Anna Therese Day and the others were said to have worked with her in the past to create documentaries in Gaza and Egypt, though their names have not been reported.
CPJ said it was not clear if any of the four were working for a particular news outlet when they were arrested.
Bahrain claimed the four were in the country under false pretenses and so had failed to register with the government.
"It is sad that the fifth anniversary of the protests is marked by the arrest of yet more journalists in Bahrain, which has since become one of the worst jailers of journalists in the Arab world," said CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator Sherif Mansour in a statement. "We call for the immediate release of the four journalists arrested today and all other journalists who have been imprisoned over the past five years."
