Police detained a photographer for an hour and a half in Colombia on Sunday, Oct. 7, reported the newspaper Vanguardia Liberal. While in custody, the photographer was forced to erase pictures he took while covering a bomb explosion in a city park in Bucaramanga, Santander.
Marco Valencia, reporter for the newspaper Q'hubo, arrived at the scene of the explosion before the police, according to the newspaper. While other journalists were already on the scene, a police official asked for Valencia's identification, kept it and took him to a patrol car without explanation, reported Q'hubo.
"When we were alone in the vehicle [the official] said to me, 'you didn't take these photos because I'm going to erase them all,'" Valencia told the newspaper. After the urging of other journalists, Police released Valencia an hour and a half later.
The Santander Corporation of Journalists (CPS in Spanish) repudiated the "arbitrary behavior on the part of the police" and demanded a clear explanation of the motives behind the detention, the group said on its blog. CPS went on to call for police to respect journalists' profession by allowing them access to information in the public interest.
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.
