Abducted journalists believed killed
ECUADOR: Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno returned home early from a regional summit yesterday amid unconfirmed reports that three press workers kidnapped along the increasingly combative border with Colombia have been slain.
Colombia’s RCN network said it had handed over to authorities gruesome photos purporting to show the bodies of the three men. Neither government has confirmed the photos’ authenticity, but Moreno said he felt he should be in Ecuador.
‘‘I’ve decided to return immediately to Ecuador due to the critical situation we are facing,’’ he said in a message posted on Twitter.
Two journalists and a driver from Ecuadorean newspaper El Comercio were taken hostage three weeks ago while investigating a rise in drug-fuelled violence along Ecuador’s northern border, which had resulted in several surprise attacks on military targets.
Moreno said he was returning to Ecuador with loved ones of the three men.
The families had travelled to Peru, where the Summit of Americas is taking place, to pressure Moreno and his Colombian counterpart, Juan Manuel Santos, to do more to obtain their loved ones’ freedom.
Earlier this week, authorities dismissed as fake a statement from a group claiming to be a holdout faction of the demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that said the news workers were killed during a military raid co-ordinated by the two governments.
In a proof-of-life video released earlier this month, the three men identified their captors as members of the Oliver Sinisterra Front, a group of a few dozen combatants that authorities say is led by a former FARC rebel known by the alias Guacho.
The group is believed to have been behind recent attacks in Ecuador.
Several press organisations have accused the two governments of taking the kidnappings too lightly.
Since the men were taken hostage, Ecuador’s government has appealed to media outlets not to sensationalise the kidnapping, while Santos’s government has repeatedly denied that the men are being held inside Colombia.
‘‘We condemn the actions of the Colombian and Ecuadorean governments and their lack of seriousness in protecting the reporters’ lives,’’ Colombia’s Foundation for Press Freedom said in a statement yesterday that urged authorities to act more swiftly to confirm the photos’ veracity.
It also said the governments should have sought the mediation of the Roman Catholic Church and other potential humanitarian mediators.
Moreno announced last month that he was sending 12,000 soldiers and police to combat drug gangs and boost security along the border. That represents about 10 per cent of the small nation’s police officers and troops.
Ecuador is a major transit zone for Colombian-produced cocaine, with small boats carrying the drugs from the South American nation’s Pacific shore to Central America and on to the United States. –AP