Tagged: Culiacan

December 21st, 2017 Breaking News Comments Off on Mexico ranked deadliest country for journalists, says international press institute

Mexico ranked deadliest country for journalists, says international press institute

(BREITBART) — by Ildefonso Ortiz and Brandon Darby

A press freedom organization has ranked Mexico as the deadliest country for journalists, overtaking Iraq and Syria for the highest number of reporters who lost their lives while practicing their craft. On the day the report was published, gunmen murdered another journalist in Mexico.

A new report by the International Press Institute labels Mexico as the most dangerous place for journalists, citing the government’s lacking efforts to protect them.

The murder of journalists is “an attack on the fundamental human right to share and receive information and on democracy itself,” IPI Executive Director Barbara Trionfi said.

According to the IPI, since 2006, when the country started a new security strategy to fight drug cartels, 79 journalists have been murdered. In 2017, there were 13 that IPI accounted for with four targeted directly for their work. On the day the report was published, a team of gunmen murdered Gumaro Perez Aguilando as he attended his son’s Christmas Festival in Veracruz.

According to IPI, none of the recorded cases have been solved. As Breitbart Texas reported in 2017, cartel gunmen targeted various journalists including Miroslava Breach, an investigative reporter from Chihuahua, who uncovered deep connections between key members of the Juarez Cartel and local politicians.

Also in 2017, cartel gunmen murdered respected journalist Javier Valdez from Culiacan, Sinaloa. The slain journalist founded the news outlet Rio Doce and covered cartel violence for several years.

[READ MORE]

May 15th, 2017 Breaking News Comments Off on Veteran reporter Javier Valdez is 6th journalist murdered in Mexico since early March

Veteran reporter Javier Valdez is 6th journalist murdered in Mexico since early March

(CHICAGO TRIBUNE) — Javier Valdez, an award-winning reporter who specialized in covering drug trafficking and organized crime, was slain Monday in the northern state of Sinaloa, the latest in a wave of journalist killings in Mexico.

Valdez is at least the sixth journalist to be murdered in Mexico since early March, an unusually high number even for one of the world’s deadliest countries for media professionals.

Valdez was shot to death in the early afternoon in the state capital of Culiacan, near the offices of the publication he co-founded, Riodoce. State Prosecutor Juan Jose Rios visited the scene and said authorities were investigating all possible motives, including that the killing could have been due to Valdez’s work, though he gave no details.

The national newspaper Milenio reported late Monday that another journalist and her son were shot dead by gunmen in the city of Autlan in Jalisco, another state known for cartel activity. Jalisco officials did not immediately respond to phone calls seeking confirmation.

Riodoce reported that Valdez was driving about a block from its offices when he was intercepted by gunmen. Valdez was also a correspondent for the national newspaper La Jornada, which reported that he was pulled from his car and shot multiple times.

Images in Mexican media showed a body lying in a street covered by a blue blanket and surrounded by 12 yellow markers of the kind typically used to flag evidence such as bullet casings.

[READ MORE]

April 18th, 2017 Related News Comments Off on Mexico’s brutal drug violence has hit a new level of complexity

Mexico’s brutal drug violence has hit a new level of complexity

(BUSINESS INSIDER) — By Christopher Woody

Public displays of brutality have become common as drug-related violence roiled Mexico over the last decade.

The recent discovery of a man’s body on top of a hospital in northwest Mexico, apparently dropped there from an airplane, takes that brutality to a new level of complexity.

The body reportedly landed on the roof of a hospital in the town of El Dorado, about 38 miles southwest of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state.

Witnesses reported seeing a person thrown out of a plane flying low over a Mexican Institute of Social Security hospital on April 12, a health official told Reuters, saying the incident occurred around 7:30 a.m.

Officials were unable to identify the body, clad in a red shirt, gray socks, and without pants, due to damage from the fall, though Mileno reported that it had signs of torture.

State prosecutors said the body had signs of severe trauma in line with “impact on the hard surface.”

“It is a man, but we don’t know more … The impact of the fall makes it more difficult to be able to identify him or the wounds he suffered,” Antonio Garcia, spokesman for the IMSS, which runs the hospital, told The Washington Post.

“I can’t recall anything like this happening before,” he said.

[READ MORE

This template is sponsored by Corporate Headquarters, which is featured on Herald Online, KCEN, and WNEM