PHOTO: AFP
According to the official state media, Xinhua News Agency, the foreigners watched the video in a hotel room. It further said that police also found similar video clips on a mobile phone which belonged to one of the South Africans.
Earlier, Chinese police had stopped 10 South Africans, nine Britons and one Indian on July 10 in Ordos.
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Britain’s Press Association reported that according to two British tourists, the documentary was a BBC production on the 13th century Mongol warrior Genghis Khan.
Hoosain and Tahira Jacobs, the British husband and wife who were deported, said that the video "may have mistakenly been deemed as 'propaganda' material."
"It can only be assumed that junior officials who made the initial arrest in Inner Mongolia made a mistake, due to perhaps their unfamiliarity of the English language," they said in a statement.
Moreover, Jacobs said that they had been travelling with a group consisting of Muslims, Christians and Hindus and that they had travelled together before to United States and Israel. They also said that they had visited the Genghis Khan Mausoleum in Ordos the day before they had been stopped at the airport.
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Xinhua had reported that the foreigners had been criminally detained on July 11 because a law "stipulates punishment for allegedly organizing, leading or joining terrorist groups."
It said the nine "admitted to their illegal acts and repented," without elaborating. It also said the police treated the case leniently and deported them on Saturday, whereas the other 11 were deported on Wednesday.
This article originally appeared on Associated Press.
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