By Dean Graber
Police found 27 bullet casings outside the home of Edín Maas Bol, whose family of reporters in the central Guatemalan city of Cobán, Alta Verapaz, have suffered three previous attacks, including the killing of his brother, reported Prensa Libre and Cobán Noticioso.
Maas, who works for a local cable TV station, said he believes the pre-dawn shooting on Wednesday was linked to his reporting, Prensa Libre added. “I’m asking the authorities to investigate this attack because I fear for my life and those of my family,” he said.
His brother, journalist Eduardo Heriberto Maas Bol, was shot to death in 2006. A similar attack on Edin Maas’ home happened in July 2008, and a homemade bomb was detonated outside the home of another brother, journalist Félix Waldemar Maas Bol, in 2009, recalled their colleague Ángel Martín Tax in Prensa Libre.
Tax also has received numerous threats, and another local colleague, Pablo Rax, suffered a kidnapping attempt in 2001. A fire was set at Rax's radio station in 2003 after it had reported on illegal logging in the region, Cobán Noticioso added.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
