The attorney general’s office decided to restructure the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Journalists, which will now focus specifically on crimes against media workers who are attacked for their profession, El Universal and EFE report.
Not only paramilitaries, but also government agents were involved in the 1999 killing of prominent journalist and humorist Jaime Garzón. El Heraldo reported that Colombian prosecutors ordered José Miguel Narváez, the ex-deputy director of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS, or Colombia's intelligence agency), be held for ordering Garzón's death.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) asked the Brazilian government and legislators to approve a proposed Constitutional amendment that would allow killings and attempted killings of journalists to be judged at the federal level. IAPA issued a declaration and sent to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Congress members a letter signed by newspaper readers from across the continent.
One year after President Manuel Zelaya was ousted from office, Honduras has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, according to the International Press Institute. The article includes a timeline of the murders of Honduran journalists in 2010.
Mexico's National Human Rights Commission intends to establish an area within the organization dedicated to following step-by-step each case of aggression against journalists, reports the newspaper El Universal.
The Inter American Press Association is kicking off a workshop about how to diminish journalists' risks with the debut of a documentary commemorating the assassination of journalist Francisco Ortiz Franco in Tijuana, Mexico, on June 22, 2004, according to the newspaper El Universal.
It appears that the killing of reporter David Meza Montesinos will not go unpunished. After weeks of investigations, the attorney general has issued an arrest order against four people accused of killing the TV and radio reporter last March, Radio América and El Heraldo report.
Ângelo Ferreira da Silva is the second convicted assassin of TV journalist Tim Lopes to leave prison while serving a sentence allowing his limited release, the G1 news site reports. Lopes was killed by drug traffickers in 2002 after being captured and tortured while he was reporting on drug and sex trafficking at community dances in a shantytown of Rio de Janeiro.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has presented formal charges to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regarding two Brazilian journalists whose alleged killers remain unpunished, IAPA reports.
The Inter American Press Association has invited readers of almost 400 papers throughout the Americas to sign a letter to President Porfirio Lobo Sosa asking him to take actions to confront and stop violence against Honduran journalists. Six journalists and one broadcaster have been killed in the country since March 1.