Argentine journalist deported for covering Venezuelan elections

Argentine journalist Jorge Pizarro, special correspondent for Radio Rivadavia, part of Grupo Alpha, covering the Venezuelan presidential elections, was detained by the Immigration Police at Caracas’ Maiquetia Airport on July 25 and subsequently deported.

Jorge Pizarro explained in conversation with Argentine journalist Marcelo Longobardi, for the Argentine media Radio Rivadia, that he was interrogated, isolated and finally deported from the country, since he did not meet “the entry requirements” to Venezuela.

“They interrogated me several times, basically with the same eight questions. They also took 14 photos of me in different settings, they kept my passport, they took me to an isolation and deportation office and made me record a video,” he said.

“Around 2:30 in the morning, we had a problem and had to stay on the plane for an hour because there was a problem. Then we got in line at Immigration, there was a person who was checking the passport and, when they saw that mine was Argentine, they called me aside,” he said.

“I thought it was a matter of routine until a lady with a shield that said Public Prosecutor’s Office interrogated me severely without explaining why. Then she passed me on to another person in plain clothes who inexplicably asked me almost the same questions again and then I was attended to by a superior officer who asked me the same questions again,” he added.

He said that when he wanted to know why they always asked him the same thing, “they almost arrested me” and they told him that he didn’t ask the questions and that “he couldn’t answer anything except what he was asked.”

In response to the incident, Marcelo Fígoli, the owner of the multimedia company for which Pizarro works, said that this “shows that the freedom and fair process of this Sunday’s elections is totally in doubt.”