RT Team Did Not Receive Any Deportation Documents From Nigerian Authorities - Journalist

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st November, 2018) The journalists of the RT broadcaster, whose passports had been seized by the Nigerian authorities, have not been granted any deportation documents, with passports having been returned to them only during a layover in Istanbul, Natalya Karachkova, one of the members of the RT media group working in Nigeria, said on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the RT journalists were able to board a plane to Russia.

"I have never thought that I would be so happy about deportation. We have not even been granted any documents. We have only managed to take a picture of a document saying that we should be subject to deportation, but eventually got ordinary stamps in our passports .

.. We got our passports back only in Istanbul," Karachkova said as quoted by RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan in social media.

According to Simonyan, the documents of the journalists might have been seized due to their professional activities.

"This is what happens when journalists manage to record dying palm trees and rivers contaminated with oil," Simonyan noted.

Two weeks ago, the RT journalists, working in Nigeria on a environmental story, were accused by the country's authorities of having a wrong type of visa and filming without a permit.