By Liliana Honorato
A judge in a Peruvian court issued an order to intercept the phone calls of eight journalists and a congressperson, reported the Press and Society Institute (IPYS in Spanish).
The judicial order was issued upon the request of the head of the Prosecutor for Organized Crime, William Montes Malpartida, to continue the investigation into the former editor of the newspaper Perú21, Rudy Palma, who was arrested in April 2012 for hacking into the e-mails of senior government officials, added IPYS.
According to INFOS, judge Carmen Arias Tello “authorized ‘the lifting of communications secrecy (intervention, listening, recording and control)’ of 18 cell phone and land line numbers,” three days after the arrest of Palma.
Four of the journalists work for Perú21, reported La República. The director of this newspaper, Fritz Du Bois, said that it is odd for a case to go this fast and this is because a public official is involved, added La República.
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.
