Tag Archives: Journalist

Photographer killed in Mexico as journalist death toll nears record

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The bullet-riddled body of a news photographer was found in central Mexico on Friday, state officials, putting 2017 on track to become the deadliest year yet for journalists in the notoriously violent country.

Edgar Daniel Esqueda, 23, who worked with Metropoli San Luis and Vox Populi SLP in the state of San Luis Potosi, was found in the state capital with at least three bullet wounds in the back of his neck, authorities said.

The news outlets where Esqueda worked reported had reported his abduction from his home by gunmen on Thursday morning.

San Luis Potosi’s governor, Manuel Carreras, told a press conference an investigation was underway. He did not say whether Esqueda’s murder was linked to his work as a journalist.

With Esqueda’s killing, 2017 could become the bloodiest year yet for reporters in Mexico, according to press freedom and journalists’ advocacy group Articulo 19.

The photo journalist was the 11th reporter killed so far this year, the group said. That matched the total in 2016, which was the highest number on record in a country torn by runaway levels of criminal and drug-related bloodletting.

Over the past 17 years, 111 journalists have been killed in Mexico, 38 of them under the current government of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Reporters Without Borders and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) both rank Mexico among the deadliest countries in the world for reporters.

Activists have repeatedly criticized Mexican prosecutors for failing to fully investigate many journalists’ murders, allowing the killers to operate with impunity.

Mexico’s human rights commission has asked state authorities to provide protection for Esqueda’s family members, who were at home with the photographer when he was taken by force, according to Articulo 19.

Witnesses who spoke with the group said Esqueda asked his kidnappers for their identity when they broke into the home where he was asleep with his wife, and they responded that they were police officers.

The state police force said via Twitter that “there has not been any police action against a reporter in the capital.”

“Criminals, sometimes connected with state actors, know that they can get away with killing journalists in Mexico because of chronic impunity for these crimes. Until that changes, the violence will continue,” Alexandra Ellerbeck, the CPJ’s program coordinator for North America, said in a statement.

Esqueda had reported threats months ago to a government-run human rights group in San Luis Potosi, one of his colleagues told Reuters.

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Christine Murray; Editing by Tom Brown)

Turkish journalist denies sending subliminal message on eve of coup

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during a fast-breaking iftar dinner at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, June 20, 2017. Yasin Bulbul/Presidential Palace/Handout via REUTERS

By Ece Toksabay

ANKARA (Reuters) – A prominent Turkish journalist denied on Wednesday that he sent out subliminal messages to coup plotters who tried to overthrow President Tayyip Erdogan last year, saying he had been put on trial for a crime which did not exist.

Mehmet Altan, an economics professor and journalist, and his brother Ahmet were detained in September and charged with giving coded messages in a television talk show a day before the abortive July 15 military coup, according to state media.

The brothers both face potential life sentences if convicted in their trial, which opened this week.

They have denied the charges, saying it was ridiculous to interpret their comments in the program – during which Mehmet Altan talked about the long history of military involvement in Turkish politics – as incitement to overthrow the government.

“If Rousseau were alive today and had shared his views on TV, he would be taken into custody for giving subliminal messages,” Altan told the court, referring to enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

“There were no subliminal messages on that TV program… I have been detained for a non-existent message, over a non-existent crime,” he said according to a copy of his defense statement posted online.

The government blames followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen for masterminding the coup, and has waged a crackdown on suspected Gulen supporters since then.

Some 150,000 police, soldiers, judges and civil servants have been sacked or suspended, drawing criticism from rights groups and Western allies who fear an attempt to silence dissent. Tens of thousands of people have been arrested.

Turkish officials reject the criticism, saying the extent of the crackdown is justified by the gravity of the threat to the Turkish state in the wake of the coup attempt, when soldiers commandeered tanks and fighter jets, bombing parliament and other key buildings in an attempt to seize power.

Gulen has denied any involvement in the failed coup, and Altan said he had no knowledge of it.

“Surely I wasn’t aware of the coup attempt. I know that I stand here today just because I did not applaud the slaughter of democracy by the government,” he told the court.

Rights groups have voiced concerns over the trial of the Altans, who are among 100 journalists detained in the last year.

“There is no possible causal link between the defendants’ news articles and the failed coup of July 2016,” said Gabrielle Guillemin from the British rights group Article 19, adding that the charges were part of a “politically motivated campaign of harassment against journalists and other dissenting voices”.

The TV show’s presenter, Nazli Ilicak, a journalist, columnist and former lawmaker, was also arrested. “I am not an enemy of Erdogan. I am just an opponent. Is it a crime to oppose?” Ilicak told the same court a day earlier.

More than 200 writers worldwide, including Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks and JM Coetzee, and other public figures have signed a petition protesting against the arrests of the Altans.

In his comments on the television program the day before the coup attempt, Mehmet Altan referred to “another structure” within the Turkish state which he said was closely watching developments.

“It is not certain when it will take its hand out of the bag and how it will take its hand out of the bag,” Altan had said.

(Editing by Dominic Evans and Richard Balmforth)

Turkish President Erdogan rules out extradition of German-Turkish journalist

FILE PHOTO: Protestors demonstrate, calling for the freedom of German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel, in the streets of Berlin, Germany, February 19, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan ruled out on Friday extraditing German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel to Germany while he is in office, repeating his assertion that Yucel is a “terrorist agent”.

Yucel, a national of both countries, was arrested two months ago on charges of making propaganda in support of a terrorist organization and inciting the public to violence. Yucel denies the charges.

Erdogan said that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had asked him to extradite Yucel but that he had denied her request saying the journalist would be tried in Turkish courts, which he said would ensure a fair trial.

Erdogan said there was no doubt Yucel had links to the outlawed Kurdish militant group PKK. “This person is a complete terrorist agent. Not all journalists are clean,” he said.

“But we will do what is necessary, within the framework of the law, against those who act as agents and threaten my country from Qandil,” Erdogan said, referring to a PKK base camp in northern Iraq.

Yucel, a reporter with the German daily Die Welt, was initially detained after he reported on emails that a leftist hacker collective had purportedly obtained from the private account of Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s energy minister and Erdogan’s son-in-law.

Since a failed coup attempt in July, Turkish authorities have arrested 40,000 people and suspended 120,000 from jobs in the police, military, the civil service and the private sector.

Western governments have criticized the crackdown but Turkey says the measures are necessary given the security threats it faces.

(This story has been refiled to fix typo in headline)

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Mexico drug war investigators unearth 47 more skulls in mass graves

Clothing is pictured on a wire fence at site of unmarked graves where a forensic team and judicial authorities are working in after human skulls were found, in Alvarado, in Veracruz state, Mexico,

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Investigators unearthed the skulls of 47 more suspected victims of Mexico’s drug war in Veracruz state, just days after uncovering 250 skulls at a separate mass grave used by drug cartels, the state’s attorney general said on Sunday.

Veracruz, on Mexico’s Gulf coast, has long been a stomping ground for criminal gangs, who fight over lucrative drug and migrant smuggling routes.

Giving details on the latest grisly find, Jorge Winckler said the skulls and remains of multiple body parts were unearthed from eight unmarked graves, clustered in a 120 sq meter area, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the town of Alvarado.

So far, Winckler said, investigators had positively identified one three-person family, missing since September 2016, and the remains of two other men.

“The work continues,” Winckler told a news conference, vowing to track down the perpetrators.

Just days earlier, investigators recovered more than 250 skulls from another unmarked grave 60 kilometers (37 miles)further north in the Gulf state of Veracruz.

That burial site was uncovered by relatives of missing family members, impatient with officials’ apathetic response, who launched their own search for missing family members.

The relatives’ groups have exposed the government’s slow progress in attending to rights abuses and victims.

The former governor of Veracruz, Javier Duarte, who belonged to the country’s ruling party, is a fugitive, fleeing organized crime charges.

Separately, on Sunday the Veracruz attorney general’s office said it was investigating the murder of a journalist, Ricardo Monlui, who was shot dead in the town of Yanga.

Veracruz is the most dangerous state in Mexico for journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists said in 2016 that at least six reporters had been killed for their work since 2010, when Duarte took office, adding it was investigating nine other cases.

(Reporting by Edgar Garrido; editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

American Beheaded By ISIS, Grandson of Holocaust Survivors

An American journalist who was brutally beheaded by the Islamic terrorist group ISIS was the grandson of holocaust survivors who had a passion for the Holy Land.

Steven Sotloff had moved to Israel in 2005 to report on the conditions there and the suffering of the Israeli people by the terrorist groups that surround them on all sides.  He also traveled around the middle east reporting on the problems caused by Islamic extremism on the average Arab.

Sotloff was kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in August 2013 at the border between Turkey and Syria.  Two weeks ago, ISIS showed him in a video and said that they would be killing Sotloff if the U.S. did not stop air strikes against their forces.

Sotloff’s friends in Israel said that he was a passionate reporter and that he said he wanted to live life to the fullest and have “a story [he] could write a book about.”  They knew something was wrong in August 2013 when he said he was leaving on a trip for a story and immediately disappeared from social media.

“He was well aware of the risks involved in his work,” a friend identified only as Abigail told Jerusalem Online.  “In Syria he was almost killed by stray bullets fired at him.”

Sotloff was 31.