Missing Journalist Found Murdered in Mexico

Mexican authorities have found the decapitated body of journalist Victor Fernando Alvarez, who was reported missing since April 2, in the coastal city of Acapulco, the prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.

RELATED:
Mexico: Violence Increases During COVID-19 Crisis

The Guerrero State Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that forensic and genetic examinations confirmed the identification of the remains of the body found on Wednesday in the southern state of Guerrero.

The human remains were located on the street next to a secondary school in Acapulco where his family last saw him.

The journalist’s family had reported him missing on April 2, which triggered a police search to locate him.

The statement said that the police had widened the probe to name the perpetrators “responsible for this homicide.”

Media watchdog Displaced Journalists of Mexico condemned the murder of said Fernando Alvarez.

“We regret to inform you that the Guerrero Authorities confirm having found the severed head of the journalist Victor Alvarez who had been deprived of liberty on April 2,” the organization tweeted.

Fernando Alvarez is the second journalist killed this year in the county after unknown assailants murdered Maria Elena Feral on March 30 in the state of Veracruz.

Crime syndicates have killed some 131 journalists in Mexico in the last nearly two decades, according to NGO Article 19.

At least ten journalists were killed in connection with their work in Mexico in 2019, according to Reporters Without Borders.

The global watchdog for journalists says that the “collusion between officials and organized crime poses a grave threat to journalists’ safety and cripples the judicial system at all levels” in Mexico.

“Mexico is sinking ever deeper into a spiral of violence and impunity and continues to be Latin America’s most dangerous country for reporters. Journalists who cover sensitive political stories or organized crime are warned, threatened and often gunned down in cold blood,” according to the media watchdog.

The state of Guerrero is one of the worst affected by violence in Mexico. In September 2014, some 43 teachers and college students disappeared in the city of Iguala.