For more than four months, 19 Ecuadorian and Colombian journalists from different media, along with national and international organizations, followed the tracks of three press colleagues abducted and murdered on the border between the two countries earlier this year.
Former military officer Daniel Urresti, who is running for mayor of Lima on Oct. 7, was acquitted as co-author of the murder of journalist Hugo Bustios in 1988.
Last Friday, Sept. 21, marked three months since radio journalist Jairo de Sousa was killed in Bragança, Pará, in northern Brazil, yet no suspects have been identified.
The public prosecutor's office of Chiapas confirmed the detention of a man in connection with the Sept. 21 murder of Mario Gómez, a reporter for El Heraldo de Chiapas in Mexico who was shot in the town of Yajalón while leaving his home to complete some work, according to the paper where he was employed. The official said announcements about others implicated in the case could be forthcoming.
Another journalist has been killed in Quintana Roo, the third media professional to be murdered in the Mexican state in the past two months. Motives behind his death are still unclear, but journalists and media organizations are calling on authorities to explore all possible lines of investigation.
The two young men of African descent who were accused of murdering journalist Ángel Gahona on April 21 were found guilty by a Nicaraguan judge on the night of Aug. 27, Confidencial reported.
Police reporter José Guadalupe Chan Dzib was shot and killed at a bar in the state of Quintana Roo just ahead of general elections in Mexico.
The Colombian and Ecuadoran governments confirmed that three bodies found in Tumaco, Colombia belong to the El Comercio reporting team that was abducted on March 26 while reporting in the border region.
Radio journalist Jairo Sousa was killed while arriving at Rádio Pérola FM in the northern state of Pára in the early morning of June 21. He was going to host his program “Show da Peróla.”
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos posted on Twitter on June 21 that three bodies were found that could belong to a team of journalists and their driver who worked for Ecuadoran newspaper El Comercio and were reportedly killed in a border region by a dissident group of the FARC.
Three bodies that could belong to two Ecuadoran journalists and a driver for newspaper El Comercio were found in Colombia, 88 days after the team was abducted near the border of the two countries.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR Court) found the Colombian State responsible for the 1998 murder of journalist Nelson Carvajal Carvajal, and for a failure to guarantee the victim’s right to freedom of expression.