Federal police in Mexico have arrested three suspected drug cartel members allegedly involved in the kidnapping of three Mexican journalists last, news reports said today.
According to the Associated Press, the suspects, aged 23, 25, and 33, allegedly worked for the Sinaloa drug cartel in the city of Gomez Palacio in the Northern Mexican state of Durango.
The suspects, Jesus Antonio Villa Nevarez, Gilberto Cervantes Pinto, and Manuel Gutierrez Gomez, were presented to the press on Thursday. Nevarez was reportedly injured in a shootout with the police.
Authorities reportedly seized equipment belonging to one of the journalists during a raid on the premises used by the gang in Gomez Palacio. They were able to arrest one of the suspects, who then led them to the other two, police told media in Durango.
As IPI reported last week, the journalists were kidnapped while covering an ongoing scandal at the prison in the city of Gómez Palacio. The prison’s director, Margarita Rojas Rodriguez, was arrested following accusations that she allowed inmates to use prison vehicles and weapons to commit crimes. Mexican authorities linked inmates to the massacre of 17 people at a party in nearby Torreon city last week, and found shell casings at the massacre site matching those from prison weapons. Inmates are now demanding the director’s reinstatement, Mexican newspaper Milenio Diario has reported.
During their kidnapping, the journalists’ TV stations were forced to broadcast messages from the kidnappers implicating rival Zetas gang members in the corruption scandal. Televisa cancelled the popular news show “Starting Point” on Saturday in protest of the kidnappings. The screen went blank for the duration of the show.
The journalists – Jaime Canales, a cameraman at Laguna Multimedia; and Alejandro Hernandez and Hector Gordoa, cameramen with national television network Televisa – have all since been released. Canales and Hernandez were freed by police in an early morning raid on Saturday, 1 August. Televisa reporter Hector Gordoa was freed the previous Thursday following negotiations with his captors. A fourth journalist kidnapped separately on the same day, and held with the other three journalists, was also freed last week, according to the Associated Press.
Speaking after his release, Hernandez told a press conference in Mexico City that he had been constantly intimidated during his ordeal and hit over the head with a board. “They were trying to have a way to force (networks) to broadcast messages,” he said, according to Reuters.
Mexico has become the most dangerous country in the world for journalists so far this year, according to IPI’s Death Watch, with at least 10 reporters killed in an upsurge in violence sparked by a government crackdown on drug cartels.
“We are pleased to hear that some headway appears to have been made in the investigation into the case of the recently-kidnapped journalists,” said IPI Interim Director Alison Bethel McKenzie. “The Mexican authorities face a tough, uphill battle to turn back the tide of impunity that has engulfed Mexico, but we welcome these arrests as a step in the right direction.”
