The spree of journalist murders showed no signs of easing in Mexico in 2010, with the killing last Thursday of daily Zócalo Saltillo reporter Valentín Valdés Espinosa in the country’s northeastern state of Coahuila.

Unidentified assailants kidnapped, tortured and shot Espinosa several times, and then dumped his body outside a local motel along with a note, addressed to “everyone,” warning that “this will happen to anybody who does not understand.”

Espinosa, a reporter for Zócalo Saltillo since the newspaper’s launch in 2008, has become Mexico’s first murdered journalist of 2010.

His killing follows a brutal 2009 in which at least eight reporters were murdered in circumstances that were likely linked to their work.

According to Zócalo Saltillo, unidentified assailants in two vans stopped Espinosa at around 11pm on Thursday, 7 January, as he left work in Coahuila’s capital city, Saltillo, with two colleagues from the newspaper.

The aggressors forced the three journalists out of the vehicle, and kidnapped Espinosa and one of his colleagues.

While Espinosa’s unnamed colleague survived – his captors beat him severely but then released him – Espinosa’s body was recovered a few hours later.

“I am appalled at the unrelenting pace of journalist killings in Mexico, and concerned at the Mexican authorities’ seeming incapacity to halt the bloodshed or arrest the killers,” said IPI Director David Dadge. “The fact that these murderers continue to operate with complete impunity is a sad indictment of a country that is considered a democracy and prides itself on its development.”

Many of the murders of journalists in Mexico are believed to be acts of reprisal against those who report on local crime and corruption.