April 26, 2024

Press Freedom

United Kingdom

OPC Calls for Release of Journalists Arrested in Belfast

Belfast, Ireland, November 2012. Photo: Flikr user “em_diesus.”

NEW YORK, August 31, 2018—The Overseas Press Club of America called on police in the United Kingdom to release two British journalists who were arrested Friday on suspicion of stealing confidential documents.

According to The Washington Post, two men were arrested in Belfast for allegedly stealing documents from Northern Ireland’s police ombudsman. The paper said filmmaker Alex Gibney tweeted that Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey had been detained. McCaffrey and Birney worked on Gibney’s 2017 documentary “No Stone Unturned” about a 1994 massacre in the village of Loughinisland southeast of Belfast.


The Overseas Press Club is an international association of journalists based in New York City that works to encourage the highest standards in journalism, to educate the next generation of foreign correspondents and to promote international press freedom and the well-being of colleagues in the field.