Matthew Chance of CNN and some 35 other journalists from around the world were freed late Wednesday, after being held captive for five days in Rixos al Nasr Hotel.
Matthew Chance and his colleagues were staying in what came to be called "Planet Rixos" because it was where the Gadhafi regime mandated that foreign media personnel be housed when in Tripoli.
Chance was interviewed on CNN and said that the end of their ordeal came after their jailers, so to speak, realized that most of the city had already fallen to rebels.
Their captors put down their weapons and calmly announced that media members were free to go. According to CNN's website, the Red Cross helped arrange the release with the BBC providing vehicles for the men and women to leave the area.
Chance said the guards had been buying the regime line that their leader would beat back the rebels and retake control of Tripoli. That didn't happen and it was only then that the Libyans realized the game was over.
"They really believed that Gadhafi was coming back, that he was beating the rebels," Chance said after his release. "That's what the government line has been on this all along." But as the rebels advanced through the city and overran Gadhafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound on Tuesday, "It became more and more obvious that there was nothing really outside of the hotel that was in Gadhafi's control."
The journalists who cover war zones and rebel uprisings of the kind in Libya are made of strong stuff. They understand the danger and volunteer for duty in spite of it. But, upon learning they would be released, some wept with relief after being told by their captors that they were believed to be NATO spies.
Chance and others in the Rixos had been using Twitter to describe their situation and the conditions they lived under. The Los Angeles Times reporter Patrick J. McDonnell wrote in Wednesday's edition that the guards' job was to convince the Western media that the "Brother Leader" as Gadhafi was called, was really only a figurehead, "...somewhat like the queen of England, eager to preside ofer Libya's transformation into a European-style social democracy."
That was the party line they themselves were fed by those close to Gadhafi. It is why when they learned of the "Brother Leader's" flight from his Bab Azizia compound, they were unsure if they were to believe the truth that already was apparent on the streets of Tripoli.
Prior to the last five days of captivity, the conditions in the Rixos were good, with what McDonnell said was serviceable Internet connections, a gym, an outside deck and a working hotel kitchen. None of that remained when the gunmen took charge of the journalists' every move
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