Venezuela arrests chief of Globovision news channel

Reporting from Bogota, Colombia, and Caracas, Venezuela -- Stepping up what opponents call a smack-down of opposition voices, the Venezuelan attorney general said Thursday that authorities had arrested the owner of the Globovision TV channel, one of the few remaining broadcasters critical of President Hugo Chavez.

Guillermo Zuloaga was arrested at an airport in western Venezuela as he was preparing to fly his private airplane to Bonaire, a Caribbean vacation destination, for Easter week. Venezuelan Atty. Gen. Luisa Ortega Diaz said Zuloaga was detained because he was considered a flight risk.

A judge on Wednesday denied bail for Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, a former state governor and Chavez critic jailed a day earlier on charges of incitement, conspiracy and spreading false information in a March 8 interview on Globovision.

During that interview, Alvarez Paz said that Venezuela had become a hub for drug trafficking and implied that the government was partly to blame.

Ortega Diaz said Zuloaga was jailed on charges of contempt and for offending the chief executive of the republic, as well as for statements made during the Inter American Press Assn. meeting in Aruba this month. At that meeting, Ortega Diaz said, Zuloaga had accused Chavez of “being responsible for shooting Venezuelans.”

Chavez has lashed out at journalists as he has come under increasing criticism from opposition figures for the high inflation rate, violent crime and what foreign diplomats and law enforcement describe as rampant drug trafficking.

In May 2007, Chavez denied the renewal of a broadcast license to RCTV, then the most popular network in Venezuela and also a staunch critic of the president.

Chavez has also forced the closure of 33 independent radio stations and clamped down on regional newspapers.

Mogollon and Kraul are special correspondents.