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RT reporters get back passports seized in Nigeria, fly home

The information was cnfirmed by the Russian Embassy in Abuja

MOSCOW, November 20. /TASS/. Reporters at the Russian television network RT, whose passports had been seized in Nigeria, got their documents back and flew to Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

"According to the Russian Embassy in Abuja, Russia’s RT journalists, Natalia Karachkova and Dmitry Tararako, whose passports had been seized by the Nigerian authorities, flew to Russia on Turkish Airlines Flight on November 20," the statement reads. "The passports were returned to their owners on departure at the airport."

"Russian diplomats constantly kept close contact with the Nigerian government and RT management, and took all the necessary measures to settle the incident as soon as possible," the Foreign Ministry noted.

Russian Presidential Special Envoy for the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, said at a meeting with Nigerian Ambassador to Russia, Steve Davies Ugbah, on Monday that it is crucial to immediately start resolving the situation with the RT journalists, whose passports had been taken away by the Nigerian migration services on November 7.

The reporters were making a film about the environment in Nigeria. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova previously said that the "only claim is that the journalists’ passports included visas of a wrong category." But they had a permit for video footage, coordinated with the Nigerian Ministry of Information.

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