Corruption and Crime

Hernando Salas Rojas, director of the Curillo municipality's local television station, in Caquetá department, was murdered on May 20, delayed reports have said. According to sources consulted by Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP) , unknown individuals burst into the journalist's home and fired several shots at him. Salas, who also previously worked in radio, was a community leader and the...

Hiram Oliveros Ortiz, an alleged participant in the assassination of La Mañana newspaper director Roberto Javier Mora García, was on June 3 sentenced to 16 years in prison by Judge José Alberto Ciprés Sánchez of the Second Bench Criminal Court in Nuevo Loredo, Tamaulipas state, northern Mexico, the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET) has reported. Oliveros Ortiz, who is being held at...

An intentionally-set fire completely destroyed the facilities of FM Radio Activa, in El Bolsón, Río Negro province, located on the border with Chile. The incident took place on June 1 around 10:30 p.m. (local time), half an hour after the last employee, an operator, had left the station, Foro de Periodismo Argentino (FOPEA) has reported. The El Bolsón public prosecutor, Francisco Arrien, told...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on Mexico's federal justice and defence ministries to investigate a June 4 incident in the northern city of Ciudad Juárez in which soldiers beat several journalists including photographer José Luis González of El Diario, a regional newspaper that suffered a great deal in 2008. In a separate development, one of El Diario’s bureaux has just had to close...

The police in Mindoro Occidental province should immediately investigate the shooting murder of Philippine radio commentator Crispin Perez for possible links to his reporting, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. An unidentified attacker stabbed and fatally shot Perez on Tuesday in San Jose in the central Philippines, according to local and international news reports. The...

A reporter for the Tele Diario news show of Guatemala’s Channel 3 television was gunned down in the eastern city of Chiquimula, police said on Sunday, the Latin American Herald Tribune website has reported. Marco Antonio Estrada was killed after parking his motorcycle on an avenue in Chiquimula, located some 222 km (nearly 140 miles) east of Guatemala City, the National Civilian Police, or PNC...

Three more suspects have been arrested for the October 2008 murders of Ivo Pukanic, owner and editorial director of the Zagreb-based political weekly Nacional, and Niko Franjic, the publication's marketing director. Three other suspects had been arrested in November 2008. Pukanic and Franjic were killed on October 23, 2008, when a bomb exploded under the editor's car, which was parked outside the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has offered condolences to the family and colleagues of Philippine journalist Jojo Trajano, who was killed in crossfire on Wednesday during a police raid of an alleged organised crime den near Manila. A group suspected of drug dealing and theft opened fire on police during the raid at around 2.30 a.m. this morning in Taytay Town, Rizal Province, fatally...

Elena Maglevannaya, a Russian journalist who was recently ordered to pay a fine of 200,000 roubles (4,500 euros) and to publicly retract her articles about the torture of a Chechen detainee, has asked for political asylum in Finland, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. She filed her asylum request while in Helsinki to attend a civic forum organised by the Finnish human rights group...

Lydia Cacho, a well-known Mexican journalist and human rights defender, is reportedly being followed by an unknown, armed man who has been seen outside her house on several occasions in the last few days. Cacho told London-based ARTICLE 19 that a blue and silver 2008 Chevrolet motor vehicle has been seen at different hours in front of her house. Witnesses have described the driver as a robust man...