Mexican AG Probing Journalist Attacks

By: E. EDUARDO CASTILLO, Associated Press Writer (AP) The Mexican attorney general's office will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate attacks against journalists, an official from the agency said Wednesday, two days after assailants opened fire on a Mexican border newspaper, seriously wounding a reporter.

Last year, Mexico named agents of the attorney general's office in each of its 31 states to investigate attacks on journalists at the local level. President Vicente Fox promised to create the post of national prosecutor to oversee local efforts, but the position has never been filled.

The national prosecutor will be named next week, Deputy Attorney General Gilberto Higuera told W Radio.

The appointment follows numerous pleas from international journalist-rights organizations to appoint a special prosecutor, as well as requests from the Association of Mexican Newspaper Editors to implement protective measures for reporters working in dangerous areas or covering sensitive subjects, such as drug trafficking or other organized crime.

In a recent report on Mexico, the Miami-based Inter American Press Association noted that in 2004 and 2005, eight journalists had been killed in the country and one went missing.

The most recent attack happened Monday night, when at least four gunmen fired a hail of bullets from assault rifles and tossed two grenades into the office of El Manana newspaper in the violence-wracked border city of Nuevo Laredo, wounding one reporter seriously.

As a result of the attack, newspaper editor Ramon Cantu told The Associated Press on Tuesday, the paper plans to stop conducting investigations of drug traffickers as a way to protect its workers.

Editors of other Mexican newspapers in the north have acknowledged that the constant threats and violence from drug traffickers have prompted them to adopt a form of self-censorship.

The New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, one of the groups that had requested the special prosecutor's appointment, lauded the government's decision Wednesday.

"I think this is an important step ... that will be a tool to allow Mexicans the appropriate legal structure to be able to express themselves freely," said CPJ's Americas Program coordinator, Carlos Lauria.

Lauria also expressed hope that the new prosecutor could advance cases involving crimes against journalists that have gone nowhere or advanced little in the hands of state investigators.