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After waiting for 16 days for word from Libya, Jane and Robert Gillis heard their daughter’s voice for the first time Thursday.
The New Haven couple’s daughter, freelance reporter Clare Morgana Gillis, was detained by the Libyan government on April 5.
Clare told her parents “that she is in good health and being held in a women’s civilian jail in Tripoli,” according to an article posted Thursday afternoon in The Atlantic.
“We’re very relieved,” said Jane Gillis, of East Rock, in a brief interview Thursday afternoon.
Clare Gillis, a New Haven native and graduate of the Hopkins School, was detained while reporting on the Libyan war for The Atlantic and USA Today.
According to The Atlantic, she was captured in eastern Libya along with two other journalists, American reporter James Foley of GlobalPost and Spanish photographer Manuel Bravo of European Pressphoto Agency.
Clare Gillis told her parents she was not mistreated, according to The Atlantic. Her parents have been appealing to the Libyan government to let a foreign diplomat or humanitarian worker visit her; so far the government has not obliged.