Mexican journalist Óscar Solís, a reporter for local newspaper El Vespertino who was kidnapped on the same day as fellow journalists Javier Canales, Alejandro Hernandez and Hector Gordoa, has also been freed.

Earlier this week, IPI reported on the freeing of Canales, Hernandez and Gordoa. At the time, media reports said that Solis remained unaccounted for.

Subsequent news reports now state that Solís was actually released on the same day as his kidnapping.

The journalists had been covering an ongoing scandal at the prison in the city of Gómez Palacio, in the northern state of Durango. The prison’s director, Margarita Rojas Rodriguez, has been 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 matching those from prison weapons.

A notorious drug cartel which claimed to be holding the journalists ordered their stations to broadcast messages from the drug traffickers in exchange from the journalists’ safety.  The journalists’ captors reportedly escaped.

“We are glad to hear that Mr. Solís is also safe,” said IPI Interim Director Alison Bethel McKenzie.  “We will continue to urge Mexican authorities to investigate the matter fully.  Drug cartels cannot have the power to force their views on the airwaves by kidnapping journalists, and journalists must be free and able to report on the ongoing violence and cases relating to the Mexican government’s campaign against the drug cartels.”

Mexico has become the most dangerous country in the world for journalists so far this year, with at least 10 reporters killed in an upsurge in violence sparked by a government crackdown on drug cartels.