KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) -- American journalist Paul Salopek was released Saturday from a prison in the war-torn Darfur region where he was held for more than a month on espionage charges.

The Chicago Tribune journalist, who was freed along with his Chadian driver and interpreter, said during a brief news conference in this Sudanese capital that his "treatment was excellent" while he was detained.

Salopek, 44, was on assignment for National Geographic magazine when he was arrested last month and accused of passing information illegally, writing "false news" and entering the African country without a visa. (Watch Salopek after his release -- :43)

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson traveled to Sudan on Friday to meet with President Omar al-Bashir and persuaded him to release Salopek and his colleagues.

"It was a humanitarian gesture," Richardson said Saturday during the news conference at a hotel. "All the problems can always be solved through negotiations."

Salopek thanked the people who helped free him.

"I am grateful to the Sudanese President al-Bashir, Governor Richardson, the U.S. ambassador and of course the U.S. consul who visited me in detention, and was helpful for me and my colleagues," Salopek said.

Salopek's wife, Linda Lynch, and Chicago Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski and Chris Johns, National Geographic magazine's editor and chief, traveled with Richardson from Khartoum to Darfur on Saturday to pick up Salopek and his assistants.

"I am now happy for having Paul released, that we have reunited. I am also grateful for President al-Bashir and Governor Richardson and all the people who helped in the release of Paul," Lynch said Saturday.

Richardson, a former congressman, U.N. ambassador and energy secretary during the Clinton administration, helped in 1996 to get three Red Cross workers, including an Albuquerque pilot, released from Marxist rebels in Sudan.

"We have been friends for the last 10 years and this relationship has helped a great deal in my job of urging them to release the journalist and his colleagues," Richardson said.

A judge in the North Darfur capital of el-Fasher released Salopek and his assistants after a 13-minute hearing earlier Saturday.

"We are stopping the case and we are releasing you right now. And that is all," the judge said in English, according to a story published Saturday on the Chicago Tribune's Web site.

The journalist was scheduled to return to New Mexico, where he has a home, as early as Sunday, and his two assistants were to go to Chad, the Tribune reported. A U.S. embassy spokeswoman in Sudan said that Salopek left Khartoum late Saturday to begin his journey home.

"Everybody is absolutely delighted. I've worked for 20 years in Africa and never had a better day than this one," National Geographic's Johns told the Tribune.

In 2001, Salopek won a Pulitzer for international reporting for his work covering Africa. In 1998, he won a Pulitzer for explanatory reporting for his coverage of the Human Genome Diversity Project. At the time of his arrest, he was working on an article about the people, culture and history of the sub-Saharan region known as the Sahel.

Earlier Saturday, Salopek said after his release in el-Fasher that he was "doing great."

"It's an interesting feeling being mobile again, in a mechanized vehicle," he said, according to the Tribune.

Back in Salopek's hometown of Charleston, N.M., many of the 2,000 residents hung yellow ribbons on the front doors of their homes, the bank and public buildings in support of the journalist.

Martha Skinner, the town's former mayor who looks after the Salopeks' home, said she was excited that the couple would return soon.

"Unbelievable, oh, wonderful," she said. "I was terribly concerned, you know with what goes on in the world, especially to journalists."

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Paul Salopek, arrested in Sudan while on assignment for National Geographic, after he was freed Saturday.