Another Mexican Journalist Gunned Down

Reporter who criticised local officials gunned down in Durango state

SOURCE: Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), New York(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, May 5, 2009 - A Mexican journalist who was critical of local authorities in the northern state of Durango was fatally shot by unidentified assailants on Sunday. In a piece published a day before the killing, the reporter wrote that he had been threatened by local government officials. The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on local and federal authorities to thoroughly and expeditiously investigate the crime.

Around 5 p.m. on Sunday, two pickup trucks intercepted Carlos Ortega Samper, a reporter for the Durango City-based daily El Tiempo de Durango, as he was driving home in the town of Santa María El Oro, 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of the state capital, colleagues told CPJ. Four unidentified individuals got off the trucks and pulled the reporter from his car, journalists at El Tiempo de Durango said. As Ortega resisted, his assailants shot him three times in the head with a .40-caliber pistol, according to press reports and CPJ interviews. Ortega, 52, died at the scene.

In an article published Saturday, Ortega alleged that Mayor Martín Silvestre Herrera and Juan Manuel Calderón Guzmán, the local representative for federal programs, had threatened him in connection with recent reporting on conditions in a local slaughter house. In the same story, Ortega wrote that he was investigating a local police officer, Salvador Flores Triana, for alleged corruption. The journalist said that the three men should be held responsible if anything were to happen to him or his family.

Ortega, also an attorney, had worked as the Santa María El Oro correspondent for El Tiempo de Durango for less than a year. His editor, Saúl García, told CPJ that he believes Ortega was killed in retaliation for his reporting on local government corruption. However, he said he could not pinpoint a specific story.