Agents with the Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Militar (General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, DGCIM) raided the offices of a media outlet yesterday and arrested four journalists, holding them for hours before releasing them in the evening.
The targeted media organization is called Entorno Inteligente, an independent news organizations that offers news coverage of Venezuela and other countries in the region. The page is administered by a journalist named Hernan Porras Molina.
Late yesterday afternoon, news began to spread on social media that the DGCIM was raiding the outlet’s offices in Caracas. The raid was confirmed in a tweet by the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Prensa (National Syndicate of Press Workers, SNTP), the country’s principal press union.
In the tweet, the SNTP also announced that journalists who were covering the raid had been arrested:
[There are] unconfirmed reports that the DGCIM has raided the offices of Entorno Inteligente and they have detained the journalists who went to the site to cover the event.
In all, five journalists were arrested: two from Caraota Digital, and three from VPiTV. The driver of the VPiTV team was also arrested.
The SNTP went on to announce that all of the detained individuals had been released by 9:05 PM, but that the authorities kept their equipment and cellphones.
Questions/Comments? E-mail me: invenezuelablog@gmail.com
In Venezuela 