Corruption and Crime

The management of the Reporte de la Economía daily has accused a network of five bankers of being behind the murder of its vice-president, Pierre Fould Gerges, who was gunned down in Caracas on June 2. The newspaper's lawyer, Giselle Suárez, said at a news conference on June 9 that the investigation was focussing on a financial group that "constitutes an appendage of the state, which has created a...

Mexican police botched the murder investigation of a journalist working near the US border in 2004 by torturing suspects and mishandling evidence, the country's human's rights commission said, according to a Reuters report. Roberto Mora, editorial director of El Manana newspaper in Nuevo Laredo, just across the border from Laredo, Texas, regularly wrote columns about drug trafficking and corrupt...

There have been new developments in the investigation into the 1997 death of Jean-Pascal “JPK” Couraud, a leading investigative journalist based in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia. According to a report on Le Monde’s website on June 6, the Papeete judge now in charge of the case, Jean-François Redonnet, searched the Paris headquarters of the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE...

The publisher of a daily newspaper critical of the Arroyo government has been found guilty of libel and sentenced to a minimum of six months to a maximum of two years in prison. She was also ordered to pay P5 million (US$113,480) in moral damages and P33,732.25 (US$765) in civil damages, the Manila-based Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) has reported. Makati Regional Trial Court...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has urged the Cameroonian government to end the intimidation of journalists reporting on corruption scandals in the country after five journalists and media industry leaders were interrogated by police in connection with the publication of articles on a defective aircraft bought for President Paul Biya. "Police harassment of our colleagues is...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) Monday called for light to be shed on a murder attempt against Aristeo Abundis Hernández, editor of the weekly Frente y Vuelta, in Panuco, Veracruz state in eastern Mexico who was shot at as he was driving home. It also condemned a threat against the daily El Correo de Tabasco and its editor Juan Padilla Herrera in which a severed human head—a typical drug-gang...

A man arrested on suspicion of being a member of a militia that abducted and tortured a reporter, photographer and driver of the O Dia newspaper in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Batan on May 14 was shown to the press on June 4 by members of a police unit known as the Delegation for Repression of Criminal Actions and Special Investigations (DRACO). He was identified as Davi Liberato de Araújo, 32...

The abduction and torture of two Brazilian journalists investigating paramilitaries in Rio de Janerio's sprawling slums have brought to the fore the increasing threats to lives of journalists in the city's favelas (shanties). A reporter, a photographer and their driver working undercover for the paper in Batan, a shantytown located in the western outskirts of the city, were abducted from a local...

the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply troubled by the death of award-winning photojournalist Trent Keegan, whose body was found on Wednesday in a ditch in Nairobi, Kenya. Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Keegan was found with head injuries in a drainage trench along a central highway. Police have opened an inquest. "This is a devastating loss for...

After being held for 19 days on questionable drug-trafficking charges in Puentecilla prison in the central state of Guanajuato, El Tiempo publisher Jesús Lemus Barajas was transferred Tuesday to a high-security federal prison in Puente Grande, in the neighbouring state of Jalisco, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The authorities said he had to be moved because he was a “dangerous...