Quito,
\nEcuadorian President Lenin Moreno has said that the three journalists abducted last month near the Colombian border are dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is with great sadness that I announce the expiration of the established 12-hour deadline,\u201d he said at a packed press conference in Quito on Friday, Efe news reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not received proof of life and we, unfortunately, have information confirming the death of our fellow countrymen.\u201d Reporter Javier Ortega, 32, photographer Paul Rivas, 45 and presenter Efrain Segarra, 60, were kidnapped in the northern border province of Esmeraldas while investigating a recent surge of violence in the area.<\/p>\n
Moreno also announced the resumption of military operations along the border with Colombia and offered a reward of $100,000 for information leading to the capture of the leader of the group that claimed responsibility for kidnapping and killing the journalists.<\/p>\n
Though the president referred to the suspect only as \u201cnarco-terrorist alias Guacho,\u201d Colombian daily El Tiempo identified him as Walter Patricio Arizala Vernaza, a 27-year-old Ecuadorian who joined Colombia\u2019s FARC rebel group as a teenager.<\/p>\n
When the FARC demobiliSed under a November 2016 peace accord with the Colombian government, Arizala struck out on his own, forming what he called the Oliver Sinisterra Front, named for a guerrilla commander killed in 2015, Ecuador\u2019s El Universal newspaper said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite all our efforts, it was confirmed that these criminals never intended to release (the journalists) alive,\u201d Moreno said, announcing a series of security measures, including an increase in military and police control over the area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Quito, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno has said that the three journalists abducted last month near the Colombian border are dead. \u201cIt is with great sadness that I announce the expiration of the established 12-hour deadline,\u201d he said at a packed press conference in Quito on Friday, Efe news reported. \u201cWe have not received proof of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28051,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28049\/revisions\/28051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}