COLOMBO: Britain’s Channel 4 news team, which traveled to Sri Lanka for the weekend Commonwealth summit, said it left the country early after days of extensive intimidation and surveillance by security forces.

The television channel’s news editor Ben de Pear said he finally decided to pull the team out after six men appeared at his hotel room door early on Sunday demanding entry.

He said the men claimed they were from the immigration police and accused the journalists of breaching their visa conditions by “attempting to enter the president’s palace.”

“It was an intimidating experience,” he wrote on Channel 4’s website in a posting Sunday, saying the campaign of intimidation made it impossible to work.

“People often get visits in this country and are bundled off in white vans never to be seen again,” he said.

The team was repeatedly targeted by protesters over the channel’s award-winning documentary “No Fire Zone: Sri Lanka Killing Fields.”

The Commonwealth summit, which ended late Sunday afternoon, was overshadowed by a row over alleged war crimes by the Sri Lankan military during the conflict against Tamil separatist rebels that ended in 2009.