Brazil
Paraguayan radio journalist discovered alivePosted Jul 20 2007
Journalist Enrique Galeano of Radio Azotey in Paraguay has emerged alive 17 months after he went missing. He surfaced in Sao Paulo, Brazil, according to reports in the Paraguayan press on July 15.
“It is very rare for a missing journalist to resurface,” Reporters Without Borders says, “and we share the joy of his wife … and their four children.”
Galeano was abducted by two Portuguese-speaking men on his way home from work in February 2006. His captors threatened his family, beat him and burned him with cigarettes before forcing him into an encounter with a prostitute in San Juan Caballero. The following night, his abductors released him in the Brazilian town of Campo Grande with a warning not to return to Paraguay. Galeano was afraid to contact his family because his kidnappers seemed to be aware of everything he and his family did, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Before his kidnapping, Galeano had been covering the seizure of a cocaine and weapons shipment. His reports were filed in the presence of Paraguayan officials alleged to have links with Brazilian crime organization Cabeza Branca.
Galeano is now in Uruguay and is seeking political asylum there. His family had already fled their home in Concepcion, where he disappeared in February 2006, to the Uruguayan capital of Asuncion.
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