A former regional press editor has won a top journalism award on the other side of the world.

But sadly, he couldn’t be there to accept it in person as he was thrown out of the country in February.

Russell Hunter, former editor of the Worcester News, picked up the Robert Keith-Reid prize for investigative journalism in Fiji.

Now chief executive officer and publisher of the Fiji Sun, Russell was picked up by two immigration officers and five soldiers in February, held overnight and put on a plane to Sydney the next morning.

He was deported from the Fiji Islands after a series of reports on a former finance minister’s secret overseas bank accounts were published.

Russell, who continues to work as CEO of the Fiji Sun from Australia, told the Worcester News: “It’s definitely one of the highlights of my 40-year journalism career that has taken me all over the world.”

Mr Hunter was editor of the Worcester Evening News, as it was called then, between 1978 and 1980.

He has donated the award, which he shared with and Oxford-based academic and former Fiji journalist Victor Lal, to the Fiji Sun.

It will now be awarded annually to the paper’s most improved trainee.