CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuelan military officers are questioning four American missionaries after they took part in a health initiative and distributed medicine in a coastal village, the head of a Venezuelan evangelical group said yesterday.
The group, which came to Venezuela to work in the town of Ocumare de la Costa, was taken to a military base in the city of Maracay on Wednesday night to answer questions about the activities, said Abdy Pereira, President of the Association of Free Evangelical Churches of Venezuela.
As of Friday, they were still being questioned, he said in a telephone interview. He said they are not imprisoned and were being treated well.
“They are missionaries who came to the country to participate in a medical assistance campaign that the El Limon church in Ocumare de la Costa has been organized for 14 years,” said Pereira.
It was not immediately clear where the missionaries were from or what organization they belonged to.
He said the group had spent three days doing medical checks during which they handed out basic medicine including ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Both analgesics have gone scarce from Venezuelan pharmacy shelves amid long-running product shortages.
