Colombia’s ELN Released Two Spanish Jounalists after Background Checks

nsnbc : Colombia’s second-largest leftist guerilla, the ELN, on Friday, released two Spanish journalists after running background checks on them. The Spanish journalists were detained in ELN controlled territory a week ago on Saturday.

ELN_ColombiaTouted as a “kidnapping” in Colombian media, the two Spanish journalists were detained by ELN forces last Saturday after entering the Cataumbo region that is largely controlled by Colombia’s National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional) – ELN, Colombia’s second-largest leftist guerrilla.

The ELN released the two journalists from the RCN television network on the same day when Spanish journalist Salud Hernandez answered to questions about whether it was a kidnapping or whether the journalists had been “embedded” with the ELN that it was a kidnapping.

Hernandez was detained while attempting to investigate what had happened to the other two journalists but was released. Hernandez insisted that regardless what the ELN called it, it was a kidnapping.

The ELN, for its part, insisted that the journalists had been detained to run background checks. The ELN handed a letter to Hernandez, explaining that the Spanish columnist and journalist had not been kidnapped but “retained in a registration and control operation” that was part of “routine operations to neutralize enemy infiltration in the region”.

Tensions are high in the region as right-wing neo-paramilitaries increasingly attempt to fill the power vacuum that emerges due to the ongoing peace process between the Colombian government and the leftist FARC-EP and ELN.

Sadly, “journalists” in Colombia have previously violated journalistic ethics and doubled as spies for the government, right-wing paramilitaries and for U.S. troops and intelligence in Colombia.

CH/L & A/N – nsnbc 29.05.2016

Source Article from http://nsnbc.me/2016/05/29/colombias-eln-released-two-spanish-jounalists-after-background-checks/

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