The owner of Venezuela's only remaining TV channel that takes a critical line against President Hugo Chavez was recently arrested, raising concerns the government is carrying out a widening crackdown aimed at silencing opponents.
Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of Globovision, was arrested on a warrant for remarks that were deemed "offensive" to the president, Attorney General Luisa Ortega said.
Zuloaga was detained by military intelligence agents as he was preparing to fly on his private plane with his wife to the Caribbean island of Bonaire, where they planned to vacation.
The arrest was seen by many as the culmination of a long campaign to rein in a channel that Chavez believes has been undermining his government. Globovision has been the only stridently anti-Chavez channel left on the air since another opposition-aligned channel, RCTV, was forced off cable and satellite TV in January. RCTV was booted off free TV in 2007.
Ortega said prosecutors are investigating Zuloaga for remarks he made during a recent Inter American Press Association meeting on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, where he joined other media executives in criticizing Chavez's government for limiting free speech and cracking down on critics.
Zuloaga is alleged to have said that Venezuela's government is cracking down on its critics and commenting that it was a shame that a short-lived 2002 coup against Chavez failed. Zuloaga has not yet publicly responded to the accusations.
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