Three BBC journalists were "detained and beaten" before being subjected to a mock execution while reporting in battle-torn Libya, the news organisation reported Wednesday.

"They hit me with a stick, they used their army boots on me, and their knees," Feras Killani, one of the released BBC Arabic reporters, said of his captors.

"He found a plastic pipe on the ground and beat me with that, then one of the soldiers gave him a long stick," Palestinian refugee Killani added. "He knew who we were and what we were doing."

Killani and his colleagues, Briton Chris Cobb-Smith and Turk Goktay Koraltan, were arrested on Monday and then taken to barracks where they "suffered repeated assaults".

Liliane Landor, controller, Languages, BBC global news, said: "The BBC strongly condemns this abusive treatment of our journalists and calls on the Libyan government to ensure all media are able to report freely.

"Despite these attacks, the BBC will continue to cover the evolving story in Libya for our audiences both inside and outside the country," she vowed.