Esneider Mayorga Corrales. the former mayor of Curillo, in southern Colombia, received 40 years in prison for ordering the killing of journalist and community leader Hernando Salas Rojas last year, reported the news agency EFE. The hit-man who committed the murder, Elber Parra Cuéllar, was sentenced to 42 years.
On Oct. 18, journalist Francisco Gomes de Medeiros was killed in front of his home in the city of Caicó in Rio Grande do Norte state, O Globo’s Repórter de Crime blog reports. F. Gomes, as he was known, worked in radio in the city, was an active blogger, and collaborated with various media outlets in the state. He is the second Brazilian journalist killed in three days.
Journalist Wanderlei dos Reis was shot by three men Saturday night, Oct. 16, inside his home in Ibitinga, São Paulo, O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reports. He underwent surgery for a serious leg wound and died Sunday morning.
During President Felipe Calderón’s trip to the violent border city across from El Paso, Texas, a group of journalists from Ciudad Juárez called on the president to solve the killings of their colleagues, EFE and the International Press Institute report.
A prosecutor has opened an investigation into two former congressmen, Francisco Ferney Tapasco and his son Dixon Ferney Tapasco Triviño, for their alleged role in the death of Orlando Sierra, a journalist and editor at La Patria newspaper, EFE and RCN Radio report.
Marvin del Cid Acevedo, part of the investigative team for the Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico, had his home broken into for a second time, and his laptop, where he stores all the documents associated with his journalistic work, was stolen, reported Cerigua.
After one of its photographers was killed by gunmen Thursday, Sept. 16, the Mexican newspaper Diario de Juárez, in an unprecedented move, published an extensive editorial on Sunday, Sept. 19, asking for a truce with drug cartels that would end the violence and, above all, stop the attacks against journalists in Mexico, reported CNN and the Associated Press. Newspaper editors also clarified that the call for peace does not mean the newspaper is giving up its journalistic work.
A photographer from the newspaper El Diario de Juárez was shot to death Thursday, Sept. 16, in a mall parking lot in Ciudad Juarez, ground zero for the drug trafficking violence in Mexico and just along the border with the United States, according to CNN. Another photographer, an intern at the newspaper, was seriously injured in the shoooting, according to the Associated Press.
Marcelo Tejero Ocampo, a 64-year-old radio journalist, was found dead the morning of Sept. 7 in his home in the town of Carmen in the state of Campeche, reported El Universal.
Adams Ledesma, director of a news program for the cable channel Mundo Villa TV, in Villa 31, a large slum in the center of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, was stabbed to death early Saturday, Sept. 4, reported the news agency DyN and magazine Perfil.