Venezuela has deported a team from US television network Univision after anchor Jorge Ramos said authorities detained them at the presidential palace because President Nicolas Maduro was upset by their interview questions.
The six-person team was held for more than two hours and had their equipment confiscated, Ramos told reporters on Monday evening after arriving back at his Caracas hotel which was surrounded by intelligence agents.
Ramos left the hotel on Tuesday morning guarded by personnel from the US and Mexican embassies while intelligence agents escorted them to Caracas' Maiquetia airport. They left on a midday flight to Miami, according to Reuters witnesses.
"They didn't give us a reason" for the deportation, Ramos told reporters as he arrived at the terminal. "They just said to us last night that we had been expelled from the country."
Ramos, a veteran anchor born in Mexico, told Mexican broadcaster Televisa that Maduro became annoyed when they showed him a video of young Venezuelans eating from a garbage truck, a sign of widespread food shortages across the country.
Maduro faces his biggest political challenge since he replaced Hugo Chavez six years ago, with dozens of countries recognising his rival Juan Guaido as the country's legitimate leader. At least seven foreign journalists who flew in to cover the turmoil were briefly detained in January.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN VENEZUELA:
* The Venezuelan opposition's envoy to the Us, Carlos Vecchio, met with US President Donald Trump in recent days and asked him to increase pressure on socialist President Nicolas Maduro, Vecchio's office said in a statement on Tuesday.
* Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido could be arrested if he returns to his country from a visit to Colombia, Maduro suggested in an interview published Tuesday.
"He can't just come and go. He will have to face justice, and justice prohibited him from leaving the country. I will respect the laws," Maduro told ABC News.
Venezuela's Supreme Court banned Guaido from travelling abroad in January. The ban is in force while he is under investigation over what Attorney General Tarek William Saab has called "serious crimes violating the constitutional order".
* More than 320 members of the Venezuelan security forces have deserted and crossed over to Colombia, Colombia's migration authority said.
A total of 326 soldiers and police have arrived in Colombia since the Venezuelan opposition launched an operation to deliver humanitarian aid into the country on Saturday. The vast majority have entered the department of Norte de Santander, where an aid storage centre is located.
