Ecuador media letter bombs
‘Military-type explosive’ in USB drives sent to 5 outlets; blast hurts 1
Journalists at five news outlets in Ecuador received letters with USB drives containing “military-grade explosives,” authorities said Monday.
One was sent to a journalist at Ecuavisa, a private television station in the port city of Guayaquil. The device exploded after it was inserted into a computer, Interior Minister Juan Zapata told reporters Monday.
The journalist, Lenin Artieda, suffered minor injuries. The other four explosives either failed to detonate or were never opened, police said.
According to Zapata, all five envelopes contained the same explosive devices and were sent via mail from Quimsaloma in the province of Los Rios.
Two were addressed to news outlets in the country’s capital, Quito, and three to offices in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s economic center and main port.
The devices contained RDX, a detonating capsule that is activated by electricity, TC Television reported.
Quito television station Teleamazonas, one of the country’s major TV networks, said employees were evacuated around 10:30 a.m. on Monday “due to a suspicious flash drive, similar to the one that detonated [in the] morning at Ecuavisa, in Guayaquil.”
The device had arrived at the reception area late last week in an envelope addressed to Milton Perez, a producer and host of the news show “Las Entrevistas de 24 Horas.”
The envelope, which contained an anonymous message, was retrieved and analyzed by anti-explosive squads.
The Ecuadoran attorney general’s office confirmed Monday that it has opened a terrorism investigation.
The country’s secretary of communications said in a statement the government “categorically rejects” any violent acts against journalists and news outlets.
“Any attempt to intimidate journalism and freedom of expression is a loathsome action that should be punished with all the rigor of justice,” the secretary said.
The Andean country of 17.8 million people has seen an increase in gang-related crimes in recent months.
Ecuador is often used as a transit point for cocaine traveling from neighboring countries to Europe and North America. President Guillermo Lasso has said the rise in violence stems from fights among drug-trafficking gangs in their quest to assert power and control territory, according to Reuters.
The explosives came just days after a massive earthquake left over a dozen dead and nearly 500 injured. On Saturday, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake, whose epicenter was about 50 miles south of Guayaquil, killed at least 15 people, authorities said.