MEXICO CITY (AP) – With an investigation barely underway, Mexican journalist protection groups are already expressing fears that authorities won’t consider the brutal killing of a photojournalist as being related to his work – even though he fled the state he covered fearing for his safety.
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Ruben Espinosa’s body was identified on Saturday at the coroner’s office by one of his sisters.
DA’s office spokesmen told the El Universal newspaper that Espinosa, who also worked as a freelancer for the AVC news agency in Veracruz, was among the dead.
The volume of killings of journalists in the Gulf of Mexico state of Veracruz alone resembles something from another hemisphere – Iraq, perhaps, or Syria or Somalia. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 11 have been slain since 2010 during Mr Duarte’s term as governor.
Espinosa moved to the Federal District a few weeks ago because he had been threatened and harassed in Veracruz, media reports said.
Another time, Espinosa said Duarte offered him money to drop a complaint after he was beaten by state police, according to Proceso magazine.
The bodies of the five shooting victims were discovered on Friday in an apartment in the Narvarte neighborhood in south-central Mexico City, the prosecutor’s office said.
Ruben Espinosa appears to have been tortured before he was shot dead, the head of a free press advocacy group said on Sunday. “But the exact theme is that he was at risk and after a month he was assassinated”.
Many reporters go to Mexico City to escape violence against journalists. He had been tied up, his face showed signs of a severe beating, and he had been shot twice in the chest. Three of them had lived in the apartment and the fourth was a domestic employee, the city prosecutor’s office said.
“Stop taking photos if you don’t want to end up like Regina”, Espinosa said he was told by a government representative controlling the crowd.
Ramirez confirmed that Espinosa had not sought official protection or help from the federal government agency created to protect journalists and human rights workers who are under threat.
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Espinosa, who was 31 years old, had specialized in documenting local social movements in Veracruz, many of which are critical of the PRI and Duarte in particular.
