(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 25 April 2000 RSF press release: Nine years later after his death, Reporters sans frontières reiterates demands for a full investigation into the assassination of journalist Santiago Leguizamon In a letter to President Luis Angel González Macchi, on the eve of the celebration of the Day of the Journalist […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 25 April 2000 RSF press release:
Nine years later after his death, Reporters sans frontières reiterates demands for a full investigation into the assassination of journalist Santiago Leguizamon
In a letter to President Luis Angel González Macchi, on the eve of the celebration of the Day of the Journalist in Paraguay, RSF expressed its “concern over the impunity that the authors of the 1991 assassination of Santiago Leguizamon continue to enjoy”. The organisation fears that this act, “which represents one of the most serious attacks against press freedom of the last ten years”, will remain in impunity. Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general, requested that the president “take all the necessary steps to shed light on this crime” and in particular, asked that “he use his influence with the Brazilian authorities to obtain the extradition of the twelve people living in Brazil who have been indicted for this crime.” RSF also requested that Luis Angel González Macchi “instruct the National Police to release the results of their investigations to the Pedro Juan Caballero Court”.
On 26 April 1991, Santiago Leguizamon, director of Radio Mburucuyá (a radio station in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero which lies on the border with Brazil), was assassinated after having denounced smuggling and drug trafficking. Nine years later, according to the Paraguay Union of Journalists (Sindicato de Periodistas del Paraguay, SPP), fourteen people have been indicted in this matter. Of the four primary suspects, two were assassinated in June 1992 and two are currently incarcerated in Brazil for other crimes. The Paraguayan judiciary continues to seek their extradition, as well as that of Daniel Alvarez Georges, Fernando Mendonca and Luis Enrique Rodríguez, who are suspected to be the intellectual authors of the homicide, and ten other people, who are all Brazilian. In the meantime, the National Police have still not provided the results of their investigations to the Pedro Juan Caballero Court, which is leading the inquiry.
