Corruption and Crime

Increasingly direct death threats have been made against Gorka Zamarreño, an investigative reporter for PRNoticias.com, since he began covering the “Malaya Affair” trial in the southern city of Malaga. The case involves an allegedly vast network of corruption centred on real estate operations in nearby Marbella. “We are concerned not only for Zamarreño’s safety but also because such threats...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has urged police investigating the April 9 murder of radio and TV broadcaster Luciano Leitão Pedrosa in Vitória de Santo Antão (in the northeastern state of Pernambuco) not to rule out the possibility that it was connected to his work as a journalist. The organisation also called on the police to keep the public informed about their...

The body David Niño de Guzmán, a journalist who had been missing since April 19, was found april 22 in La Paz. An explosive charge was apparently used to kill him. Residents in the area where the body was found heard an explosion in the early hours of the morning after he disappeared, the police chief said, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Niño was the...

Brazilian journalist Luciano Leitão Pedrosa, known for his critical coverage of local authorities and criminal groups, was shot Saturday night at a restaurant in Vitória de Santo Antão in northeastern Pernambuco state, according to press reports. At about 9 p.m., a man entered a restaurant where Pedrosa had gone to buy food and shot him in the head, the Brazilian press reported. According to the...

Zaman Ali, a reporter who covered organised crime for the Urdu-language newspaper Extra News, was brutally murdered on April 2 in the Karachi suburb of Lyari, one of the most dangerous areas of the city. “The number of journalists killed in Pakistan in the past 13 months now totals 14,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “We are appalled by this permanent state...

The Moscow city court has continued hearings in the murder case of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova. The March 15 hearing opened with yet another attempt by lawyer Aleksandr Vassilyev, who is defending Nikita Tikhonov, the man accused of shooting and killing the two victims, to challenge Judge Aleksandr Zamashnyuk, saying he is biased "in favour of the prosecution". That plea, like the...

A particularly shocking attack was carried out last weekend on Seymour Khaziyev, a journalist with the opposition newspaper Azadlig, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Khaziyev was set upon by six masked men as he was returning to his home in Jeryanbatan on the outskirts of Baku on the night of March 26. Taken in a minibus to an unknown location with a...

Organised crime seems to have been responsible for the murders of two journalists on March 25 in Monterrey, in Mexico's northern state of Nuevo León – José Luis Cerda Meléndez, 33, a programme host on the national TV channel Televisa, and Luis Emanuel Ruíz Carrillo, 20, a reporter for La Prensa, a daily based in the neighbouring state of Coahuila, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

Many of Mexico's leading news organisations have agreed common guidelines on how to cover drug-related violence. Newspapers and broadcasters agreed not to glorify drug traffickers or publish cartel propaganda. They also promised joint action to protect journalists, at least 20 of whom have been killed since 2006, according to BBC News. Excerpts: [ Link] The accord defends the media's right to...

Noel López Olguín, a journalist based in Mexico's eastern state of Veracruz, has been missing for the past two and a half weeks., according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). López works for local weeklies Horizonte and Noticias de Acayucan and the daily La Verdad. Gerardo Perdomo, the head of the Veracruz State Commission for the Defence of Journalists, told the...