Briton, Spaniard among kidnapped journos

Four journalists kidnapped in Somalia included a Briton, a Spanish freelance photographer and two local Somali reporters, an advocacy group said Thursday.

The New York group The Committee to Protect Journalists told CNN the four were seized Wednesday after they left their hotel in Bosasso, a port city in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region.

Tom Rhodes, CPJ's Africa Program coordinator, told the broadcaster, This underscores what an incredibly dangerous place Somalia has become for both local and foreign journalists.

The kidnappings came as a British coroner ruled in Ipswich, England, that a BBC journalist slain in Somalia in 2005 only agreed to go to Mogadishu because she believed she would lose her job if she didn't.

Peter Dean, coroner for Greater Suffolk, ruled the shooting death of BBC producer Kate Peyton, 39, was an unlawful death after hearing the journalist's friends and family tell an inquest Peyton had complained of being pressured by her employer, the Times of London reported.

She felt that she could not turn this job down, Dean said at the inquest. If that was not the case, she would not have been in this situation and she would not have died.

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