Corruption and Crime

A life sentence has been passed on hitman Madix Maulana for the 2005 murder of radio journalist Edgar Amoro in Pagadian, on the southern island of Mindanao. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) regards it as an “encouraging sign” but believes the case should not be closed until the masterminds and accomplices have been identified and brought to trial. In a written message to RSF after sentencing, Amoro...

Radio journalist José Luis Romero’s body was found on January 16 alongside the road from Los Mochis to El Fuerte, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, just over two weeks after gunmen grabbed him while he was out shopping in Los Mochis on December 30 and bundled him into a pickup. Sinaloa state judicial officials said Romero, 40, journalist of Línea Directa, was tortured and then shot in the head...

Jaime Flete García, a businessman based in the northern city of Santiago de los Caballeros, was charged on January 12 with hiring two men to murder Normando García, a cameraman employed by Santiago-based TV station Teleunión, on August 9, 2008. The two alleged hit men, José Amauris Santiago and José Agustín Espinal, were also charged with his murder. “In a country where impunity has often been the...

Freelance journalist John Grobler was assaulted by four men at a bar Friday evening in Namibian capital Windhoek, cutting his face with a broken glass and kicking him repeatedly in the head. Grobler was taken to MediCity Emergency Clinic, where he was treated and released, the journalist told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Grobler was able to identify three out of four...

Just a week after radio Línea Directa crime reporter José Luis Romero was abducted in the northern state of Sinaloa, two other journalists were abducted Thursday in Coahuila, another northern state, and one of them, Valentín Valdés Espinosa, was found dead Friday. According to his newspaper, the Zócalo de Saltillo daily, Valdés was found with a warning message pinned to his chest, a practice often...

“Nothing seems able to stop the violence against journalists,” Reporters Without Borders said today after learning that A Philippines radio commentator Eugene Paet was wounded in a shooting attack Thursday in a the northern province of Ilocos Sur, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The motive for the attempt to kill Paet is not yet clear but his family said it could be linked to...

Bulgarian prosecutors must thoroughly investigate Tuesday's murder in Sofia of Bobi Tsankov, author of a new book and a series of newspaper articles detailing the activities of reputed crime figures, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Two gunmen opened fire on Tsankov, 30, and two other men on busy Aleksandur Stamboliiski Boulevard in downtown Sofia at around 12:30 p.m. Tsankov...

The news of the abduction of 40-year-old radio journalist José Luis Romero in the northwestern state of Sinaloa has caused shock and anger in a region notorious for being the preserve of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the country’s leading criminal and drug-trafficking syndicates. A crime reporter for the Línea Directa radio station, Romero was out shopping in the city of Los Mochis on December 30...

Unidentified intruders broke into the offices of the Riga-based daily Neatkariga Rita Avize and its publishing house SIA Mediju Nams on the night of January 1 in which windows were broken, the offices of editors and leading reporters were badly damaged, and many files were destroyed or defaced, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “They tried to make us think it was an ordinary burglary...

Police in Kazakhstan said Monday that they have identified several suspects in this month’s murder of prominent Kyrgyz editor Gennady Pavlyuk, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Police did not identify the suspects or describe their alleged roles, other than to say the suspects are citizens of neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. In a statement Tuesday, the Kyrgyz...