In the video, Mario Ángel González accuses the former Chihuahua state attorney general of ordering the murder of journalists Armando Rodríguez Carreón and Enrique Perea Quintanilla.
(RSF/IFEX) – In a video posted on 25 October 2010 on the website of the daily newspaper “El Diario” (and subsequently posted on YouTube), lawyer Mario Ángel González, the kidnapped brother of former Chihuahua state attorney general Patricia González, has accused his sister of ordering the murder of two journalists.
In the video, González is seen handcuffed and surrounded by five heavily armed masked men. Responding to questions, he says that articles by Armando Rodríguez Carreón, of “El Diario” and Enrique Perea Quintanilla, the founder and editor of the monthly “Dos Caras, Una Verdad”, linked his sister to the Juárez drug-trafficking cartel, and that she therefore ordered their execution.
Rodríguez Carreón was gunned down outside his home in Ciudad Juárez on 13 November 2008. Perea Quintanilla was murdered on 9 August 2006. In a dubious video sent to TV Azteca three days after Perea Quintanilla’s murder, three men are seen confessing to having carried out the killing on orders from the Juárez cartel.
Reporters Without Borders treats all disclosures of this kind with the required caution.
The carefully-staged interrogation of González raises many questions about the veracity of what is alleged. Who made the recording and with what aim? Who are the armed men surrounding González and why are they on screen? Was González talking spontaneously or was he reciting what he had previously been told to say? The investigations into the unsolved murders of these two journalists should be re-launched on the basis of these questions.
Mexico is ranked 136th out of 178 countries in the press freedom index that Reporters Without Borders released in 2010. A total of 11 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since the beginning of the year. It has been established or is considered probable in seven of these cases that the murder was linked to the victim’s journalistic work.
Click here to watch the video (in Spanish, with no subtitles)
