May 3, 2023, 4:09 PM
May 3, 2023, 4:09 PM
The journalist Marcelino Rodríguez Tito, from Radio Omega Noticias, from Yapacaní, He was summoned by the Prosecutor’s Office to give his statement, as a witness, after the press worker interviewed, on April 28, a man who denounced a robbery committed by alleged police officers.
The summons, which bears the signature ofthe prosecutor Osvaldo Vinicius Castillo Rivero, is for the journalist to appear on Thursday, May 4, at 5:00 p.m., at the Controlled Substances Prosecutor’s Office.
The journalist Rodríguez responded to the complaint of a man who identified himself as a rancher. He said that he and his companion were robbed when they went to negotiate the purchase of a van near kilometer 6, the Yapacaní cemetery area. He indicated that the alleged vehicle “sellers” got out of a vehicle with heavy-duty weapons and ran towards the vehicle where he was.
He said that when they saw the armed subjects, they moved back, but they got out of the vehicle and fled on foot. The man told the journalist that they not only abandoned their vehicle but also their cell phones and the US$ 10,500 that he had brought to buy a van.
The farmer met with the Omega Radio Press Team, they even returned to the place where he was persecuted and abandoned his mobility. All this material was published by the journalist on his social networks; however, police authorities gave another version, indicating that this is not a rancher but an alleged drug trafficker.
Moreover, the departmental commander of the Santa Cruz Police, Colonel Erick Holguín, in a press conference, reported that this alleged drug trafficker was being persecuted in an operation that agents of the Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking (Felcn) had organized. He reported that the uniformed officers allegedly found 10 packages of drugs in the abandoned vehicle.
“It is a person who is on the run for trafficking in controlled substancesHE He was in a vehicle transporting drugs. In the Felcn operation, the man, upon noticing the police presence, fled. It was an operation by police officers identified with Felcn vests and badges,” Holguin reported.
This news that the alleged rancher was a drug trafficker was also spread by Radio Omega. On Saturday, April 29, an officer visited the facilities of the media outlet, located in the municipality of Yapacaní, handed in a prosecutor’s request requesting that the journalist reveal the data of his interviewee, not only his full name but also his identity card. He was given 24 hours to come forward.
This Wednesday morning, a group of policemen again arrived at the Radio Omega facilities, this time to deliver a summons to the journalist Marcelino Rodríguez Tito, who, upon being surprised by the notification, made a broadcast on social networks, reporting on the police procedure.
Since Rodríguez did not want to receive the notification, the police officers attached the summons andon the wall.
This notification had already been announced by the commander of Santa Cruz and indicated that the requirements would be made to meet the man who reported the alleged robbery.
The journalist criticized the actions of the prosecutor and the police, and clarified that the only thing he did as a journalist was pick up the citizen complaint. Forcing journalists to reveal information is considered an attack on the Printing Law and a violation of information rights.
