By Ingrid Bachmann
Prosecutors have charged two people in the kidnapping of Luis Gerardo Núñez, a reporter for the Globovisión TV network who was rescued in Caracas Friday night by police after a ransom was paid, Globovisión and El Carabobeño report. He was abducted for at least 48 hours.
The reporter, 24, was under constant threat of death by his captors, who sought approximately $230,000 in ransom. They had considered Núñez to be wealthy because of a photo posted on Facebook, in which he posed next to an airplane, Últimas Noticias says.
One of the suspects in Núñez's abduction is his friend and former coworker, radio producer Francisco Contreras, El Universal says. Núñez was apparently targeted because his abductors saw the photo and assumed that his family had money because they had an airplane. Authorities believe Contreras planned the kidnapping.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
