Journalist and bodyguard gunned down in southern Mexico
August 3, 2020
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for a thorough investigation into yesterday’s double murder of a journalist and his police bodyguard in southwestern Mexico. The editor of a news website specializing in covering crime, Pablo Morrugares was the fourth journalist to be murdered since the start of the year in Mexico.
Pablo Morrugares, the target of death threats since 2015, and the state-appointed police officer providing him with protection were gunned down in cold blood by heavily-armed men who burst into a restaurant at around 1 a.m. on 2 August in Iguala, a city in the state of Guerrero.
The editor of the PM Noticias news website, Morrugares concentrated on doing investigative reporting into the activities of criminal groups in the region. His latest stories included one about the provisional detention of two murders suspects and one about an ambush of police officers by a criminal group.
“We urge the authorities to conduct an exhaustive investigation into the murder of the journalist Pablo Morrugares and his bodyguard,” said Emmanuel Colombié, the head of RSF’s Latin America bureau. “It is essential that the authorities prosecute those responsible for this double murder and combat impunity for this kind of crime, which fuels violence against journalists in Mexico.”
Morrugares was the second journalist to be murdered this year in Guerrero state, following Víctor Fernando Álvarez Chávez, who disappeared on 1 April and whose death was confirmed by the state prosecutor ten days later.
More:
https://rsf.org/en/news/journalist-and-bodyguard-gunned-down-southern-mexico
= new reply since forum marked as read
August 4, 2020 6:39 PM EDT
Mexico City, August 4, 2020 – Mexican authorities must immediately and credibly investigate the murder of reporter Pablo Morrugares and bring the attackers to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Morrugares was shot and killed in the city of Iguala in early hours of August 2, according to news reports and officials.
Morrugares is at least the second journalist to be killed this year while enrolled in a federal protection program for journalists under threat.
“We are dismayed that Mexican journalists are being killed while supposedly under federal protection,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “Authorities must do everything in their power to curb this impunity in attacks on the press, bring the culprits in Pablo Morrugares’ murder to justice, and guarantee the safety of reporters it has committed to protect.”
Morrugares, the founder and editor of news website PM Noticias, was attacked shortly before 1:00 a.m. on August 2 in a restaurant in Iguala, some 120 miles south of Mexico City in the state of Guerrero, according to a statement the Guerrero state prosecutor’s office posted on its Facebook page yesterday.
The statement said that two heavily armed men entered the restaurant and fired more than 50 rounds at Morrugares, who died instantly. A police officer assigned to Morrugares as part of a federal protection program also died in the attack. The gunmen left the scene immediately after.
PM Noticias covers general news, local and regional politics, and crime and security in Iguala and the state of Guerrero. Most recently, the website published stories about violence in the state, political events, and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on Guerrero.
Several attempts by CPJ to reach PM Noticias for comment by message and telephone went unanswered.
Before founding PM Noticias, Morrugares worked as a spokesperson for the Iguala municipal government during the administration of José Luis Abarca. The former mayor was arrested on November 4, 2014, for his alleged involvement in the mass abduction and suspected assassination of 43 students from a Guerrero rural teachers’ college on September 26 of that year.
In 2016, Morrugares and his wife were targets of an attack by unidentified gunmen in Iguala, according to news reports. Following the attack, the reporter was placed in a protection program overseen by the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which operates under the auspices of the federal Interior Secretariat (Segob).
More:
https://cpj.org/2020/08/mexican-journalist-pablo-morrugares-killed-in-iguala/
~ ~ ~
Gunmen killed journalist Pablo Morrugares and his bodyguard in Guerrero
The Inter American Press Association called on authorities to investigate the crime
Pablo Morrugares was the fifth journalist to be killed in Mexico in 2020 - Photo: Marco Ugarte / AP
ENGLISH 04/08/2020 11:21 Newsroom & Agencies Mexico City AP, EFE Updated 11:29
Journalists and press groups called for justice on Monday after gunmen murdered a journalist in Guerrero, along with a police officer assigned to protect him after a 2016 attack.
Pablo Morrugares was the fifth journalist to be killed in Mexico this year, in attacks that are increasingly killing police guards assigned to the victims. Over 140 journalists have been killed over the past 20 years.
The prosecutors' office in Guerrero said Morrugares and a state police officer were at a restaurant when they were killed in a hail of bullets on Sunday. Authorities found 55 shell casings from assault rifles at the scene in the city of Iguala . The killers allegedly opened fire from a passing vehicle.
Morrugares was director of the PM Noticias Guerrero web site, which frequently reports on the gang violence that plagues the region. Local media reported that threats against Morrugares had been displayed in the past on banners hung by roadsides, a tactic frequently used by drug cartels in Mexico.
More:
https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/english/gunmen-killed-journalist-pablo-morrugares-and-his-bodyguard-guerrero
Welcome to D.U., davidmitch. 
