(IPYS/IFEX) – Police have confirmed that journalist Felix Haro Rodriguez’s death was provoked by a family matter. After the information about the murder of the journalist was released, it had been thought that he had been killed by terrorists or drug traffickers in Aucayucu, in the district of Huanuco. **Updates IFEX alerts of 9 June […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – Police have confirmed that journalist Felix Haro Rodriguez’s
death was provoked by a family matter. After the information about the
murder of the journalist was released, it had been thought that he had been
killed by terrorists or drug traffickers in Aucayucu, in the district of
Huanuco.
**Updates IFEX alerts of 9 June and 8 June 1999**
Officers of the Homicide Investigation Division, who travelled to the region
from Lima to investigate the crime, have concluded that the assassin is
farmer Cayo Zevallos Bautista who, together with Haro’s wife, Inés Espinoza
Tucto, and his sister-in-law, Santa Espinoza Tucto, arranged to have the
journalist killed.
According to police reports, on 2 June 1999, Zevallos killed Haro with a
machete. He took his victim to the woods near the town of Cotomonillo and
there he decapitated Haro. Afterwards, he went back to Aucayacu to inform
the two women. The following morning Ines Espinoza went to the police to
report that her husband was missing. She explained that he had gone to work
on the previous afternoon and had not returned, and that she suspected that
terrorists might had killed him.
This information contradicts the reports previously released by the media in
Aucayuca and Lima. It had been reported that Haro was asked by two strangers
to take photographs during a social event. Because of the manner in which he
had been murdered, it had been suspected that it was an act of the guerilla
group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) which, by coincidence, had been
involved in a confrontation that only a few days before had left six people
dead in the area.
The reports released by newspapers in Lima the day after the body was found
pointed to a terrorist attack, as did the report issued by IPYS. Most
reporters believed, due to their familiarity with terrorist cases and the
suspicious silence of the police, that the attack was most likely the work
of terrorists or drug traffickers. Furthermore, they thought that jealousy
and family motives were being used as a cover up by the police to downplay
the situation in the Peruvian jungle. But in the end, the investigation has
clarified the motive for the crime and a terrorist attack has been
discarded.
