"Bolivian cameraman and news editor Sebastián Méndez Sevilla, from the Facebook news program Noticias Villanas, has been behind bars for more than 48 hours on charges of aggravated robbery and criminal association. He was detained by the police, who also tried to incriminate him by planting a homemade explosive to justify his arrest.
The incident happened on Nov. 11, during the twenty-first day of the civic strike in the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz, which is demanding the application of the results of a national census before the general elections of 2025.
The Monitoring Unit of the National Press Association (ANP, for its Spanish acronym), which represents Bolivia's main print media, verified that Méndez works as a news cameraman for the news site and that he was assaulted, stripped of his cell phone and then detained by riot police."
