Four New York Times journalists who went missing in Libya last week , including two UW-Madison graduates, have been located and will be freed, according to The New York Times.
Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's son, told ABC News Friday that forces loyal to el-Qaddafi had captured the journalists after they entered the country illegally from Egypt.
The graduates, Anthony Shadid and Lynsey Addario, and their two associates had not been heard from since Tuesday morning, according to the Times.
New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said in a statement Tuesday he had talked with the Libyan government and that they were attempting to locate the journalists.
""We are grateful to the Libyan government for their assurance that if our journalists were captured they would be released promptly and unharmed,"" Keller said.
The four journalists were allowed to call their families Thursday evening, and the Libyan government told the U.S. State Department they would release all of them, according to the Times.
Shadid, former Campus Editor at The Daily Cardinal, graduated from UW-Madison with degrees in journalism and political science in 1990.
A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Shadid is the Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times. He covered the heart of the Egyptian uprising before starting work in Libya in early March.
Shadid spoke at UW-Madison in December about the unintended consequences of the Iraq war.
""He is one of America's leading foreign correspondents and he lives at the intersection of war, religion and journalism,"" Journalism professor Stephen Ward said.
Addario, who graduated with honors from UW-Madison in 1995, works as a freelance photojournalist for publications including The New York Times, National Geographic and Time Magazine.
Addario was part of the New York Times team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and she received the MacArthur Fellowship, or ""Genius Grant,"" in 2009.
