Venezuela

The alleged mastermind in the 2009 murder of Venezuelan journalist Orel Sambrano was arrested Thursday last in Colombia and is now facing extradition to Venezuela, local and international press reported. Colombian authorities arrested Walid Makled García in the city of Cúcuta, near the border with Venezuela. A warrant was issued in 2008 for Makled in Venezuela on drug trafficking charges...

Venezuelan authorities Friday hastily quashed a ban on newspapers printing violent images after a firestorm of criticism from media outlets, rights groups and UN officials who branded it censorship, according to news reports. The announcement, made overnight to the state news agency AVN by the legal director of the public defender's office, Larry Davoe, reversed a court order this week imposing a...

Venezuelan prosecutors are investigating El Nacional newspaper after it published a front-page photograph of corpses piled up at a morgue in the capital Caracas, the government said on Saturday, according to local and international news reports. There were 11 dead bodies -- including a child and most of them naked -- in the colour photograph under a Friday headline about deteriorating security in...

Supporters of President Hugo Chávez's government painted the façade of the Globovisón television station's headquarters with messages backing Chávez and with the logos of Venezuela's United Socialist Party (PSUV). The incident took place in Caracas on July 28, according to delayed reports by Instituto Prensa y Sociedad de Venezuela (IPYS-Venezuela) The individuals responsible for the graffiti...

Venezuelan newscaster Alexander Mireles has said that his radio programme "Hablando Claro y Raspao", broadcast by radio station Class 98.7 FM, was taken off the air on July 6 because Teodoro Bolívar, governor of the State of Cojedes in central Venezuela, bought all of the station's air time, according to delayed reports. Mireles, who is critical of Bolívar's administration, told Instituto Prensa y...

A Venezuelan newspaper that takes a critical line against President Hugo Chavez's government says its office has been attacked with firebombs, the Associated Press has reported. Carlos Hernandez is executive director of Las Noticias de Cojedes. He said no one was injured when unknown people hurled two Molotov cocktails at the building early Tuesday. Hernandez told the local television channel...

President Hugo Chávez's government is about to acquire a majority stake in Globovisión, a privately-owned TV station that is critical of his administration. By acquiring the shares of some of the station’s directors, the government says it will be able to control 48.5 per cent of its capital, according to Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF). Federal Bank chairman Nelson Mezerhane stepped in last month...

Venezuelan columnist Francisco “Pancho” Pérez has been sentenced to prison on defamation charges, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Friday, a court in Carabobo found Pérez, a columnist with the daily El Carabobeño, guilty of defaming Valencia’s mayor Edgardo Parra, the local press reported. He was sentenced to three years and nine months. In two columns published in...

A former police officer has been convicted in connection with the 2009 murder of Venezuelan journalist Orel Sambrano in the northern city of Valencia, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). A court in Carabobo state sentenced Rafael Segundo Pérez, a former Carabobo police sergeant, to 25 years in prison on Tuesday on conspiracy charges related to the murder, according to press...

Gustavo Azócar Alcalá, a journalist based in the western Venezuela state of Táchira who had been detained since July 9, 2009, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on March 26 on a charge of “administrative corruption” but was granted a conditional release, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The court acquitted him on charges of embezzling public funds and fraud. The charges...