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 State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said President Barack
Obama's administration was looking into the incident, but confirmed
that "all four U.S. military personnel being held in Libyan
government custody have been released."
A U.S. defense official said the Americans appeared to have been
checking possible evacuation routes for the U.S. embassy in Tripoli.
The Americans were near Sabratha, an area west of Tripoli that is
home to well-known Roman ruins, "as part of security preparedness
efforts when they were taken into custody," Psaki said in a
statement.
Passport pictures said to belong to the four were posted on Twitter.
The identity of the Americans or the authenticity of those photos
could not be immediately confirmed.
Psaki said the United States, which backed the 2011 uprising against
Muammar Gaddafi, valued its relationship with "the new Libya."
"We have a strategic partnership based on shared interests and our
strong support for Libya's historic democratic transition," she
said.
More than two years after the collapse of Gaddafi's rule, the North
African country is still in turmoil, with widespread insecurity,
rival militias and a burgeoning autonomy movement in the country's
east.
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The detention takes on greater significance because of the militant
attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, in which U.S. Ambassador
Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
The attacks touched off a political storm in Washington, with
Republicans accusing Obama's administration of telling shifting
stories about who was behind the attacks.
In October, U.S. forces seized Nazih al-Ragye, better known by the
cover name Abu Anas al-Liby, in Tripoli in connection with the
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Missy Ryan;
editing by Peter
Cooney and Christopher Wilson)
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