WASHINGTON: A Miami Herald journalist was arrested in Venezuela for unknown reasons while reporting on the country's chronic shortages and forthcoming municipal elections, the US newspaper said Friday.
The Herald cited local sources saying American reporter Jim Wyss was first detained by the National Guard on Thursday, before being transferred to Venezuela's Military Intelligence Directorate in the western city of San Cristobal.
"We are very concerned. There doesn't seem to be any basis for his detention and we're trying to figure out what's going on," the newspaper's executive editor and vice president Aminda Marques Gonzalez said in a statement.
"We are asking that Jim Wyss be released immediately."
Herald editors said they were speaking with various Venezuelan government officials to secure his freedom.
El Universal journalist Lorena Arraiz told the newspaper she saw Wyss in custody and he "looked all right," though authorities would not allow reporters to get close.
The United States and Venezuela have been without mutual ambassadors since 2010, and Caracas kicked out the US charge d'affaires in October, leading Washington to reciprocate.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who faces a key test of his fledgling presidency in December, is a firebrand anti-US populist in the mould of his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez.
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