ECUADOR: The attorney general’s office said on Monday that explosive electronic devices were sent through the mail to journalists at different news outlets in Ecuador.
In a statement, the attorney general’s office said that the investigation would be done together because the envelopes sent to journalists had similar looks and contents. The statement did not name the media outlets that were affected.
When journalist Lenin Artieda plugged one of the devices into his computer at Ecuavisa TV in Guayaquil, it partially blew up. He suffered slight injuries, the police say.
Xavier Chango, the national director of forensic science, said, “It’s a military-type explosive, but very small capsules,” referring to the explosive that was sent to Ecuavisa.
Prosecutors said early Monday that the police officers blew up a device that was sent to the news department of TC Television in Guayaquil.
Fundamedios, a group that supports freedom of expression in the region, said that explosive electronic devices were sent to a radio station and a TV station in Quito.
The administration said that it would defend the county’s freedom of expression. It issued a statement that read, “Any attempt to intimidate journalism and freedom of expression is a loathsome action that should be punished with all the rigor of justice.”
Guillermo Lasso, the president of Ecuador, says that the competition between drug trafficking groups for territory and power is to blame for a rise in violence, including in prisons.
Cocaine that is being transported to the United States and Europe transits through Ecuador. The television network Teleamazonas reported that one of its correspondents had received an anonymous envelope on Thursday and, upon opening it, had found an explosives-containment device.
In the past few months, there has been a big rise in murders and gang-related crimes in the Andean country, which is used as a way to smuggle cocaine from Peru and Colombia. The second-largest city in Ecuador, Guayaquil, where three of the explosives were sent, has seen dramatic levels of violence, including beheaded corpses dangling from pedestrian bridges and fatal prison riots between rival gangs.
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