Venezuela detains U.S. filmmaker
A 35-year-old filmmaker from California has been arrested by Venezuelan authorities who are accusing him of fomenting postelection violence on behalf of the U.S. government.
President Nicolas Maduro said Thursday that he had personally ordered the arrest of Timothy Hallet Tracy for "creating violence in the cities of this country." The country's interior minister said Tracy was working on behalf of U.S. intelligence, paying right-wing youth groups to hold violent demonstrations in order to destabilize the country after Maduro's narrow election win.
Tracy's friends and family told The Associated Press that he had been in Venezuela since last year making a documentary about the confrontation between the opposition and a socialist government that is struggling to maintain its once-high popularity after the death of charismatic President Hugo Chavez.
The Georgetown University English graduate had directed or produced at least two previous documentaries, the 2009 "American Harmony," about competitive barbershop quartet singing, and the recent Discovery Channel program "Under Siege," about terrorism and smuggling across the U.S./Canada border.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57581492/venezuela-detains-u.s-filmmaker/
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