Mexican gunmen kill editor

2004-06-23 07:52

Tijuana - Gunmen ambushed and killed a founder and editor of the crusading weekly newspaper Zeta, the latest in a series of attacks against the newspaper's leadership.

Francisco Ortiz Franco was gunned down on Tuesday as he left a clinic with his children, said Raul Gutierrez, spokesperson for the state attorney general's office.

State investigators said a masked man armed with a pistol jumped from the passenger side of a black 4X4 Jeep and shot Ortiz at close range while he sat in the driver's seat of his blue Chevrolet Cobra. The Jeep then sped away.

Ortiz was hit four times in the head and neck, and died at the scene, said Francisco Castro Trenti, director of forensics for the Baja California state attorney general's office. The children, aged eight and 10, were unharmed.

Virginia Monje, 30, heard the shots from her kitchen. "They sounded like fireworks," she said.

Papi! Papi!

She went outside to see Ortiz's two young children running and shouting "Papi! Papi!" They were later escorted from the scene by people wearing plainclothes, Monje said.

Mexican President Vicente Fox ordered federal officials to collaborate with local authorities in order to resolve the investigation rapidly, and sent a message to Blancornelas expressing his "preoccupation" and "indignation" at the killing, a news release from his office said.

"The federal government reiterates its condemnation of every act that pretends to weaken the integrity of journalists and its conviction that a free and critical press is the best guarantee for the strengthening of our democracy," the release said.

Zeta's editorial board said it "demands an investigation that leads to the killers' capture," but added that it would not speculate on who was responsible "until we have sufficient information."

Zeta has been famed for its reporting on the influence of drug traffickers in Tijuana, home to several notorious narcotics operations.

Ortiz, who trained as an attorney, was a founder of the newspaper, which started publication in 1980, and one of its three editors. He wrote the newspaper's editorials and specialised in legal affairs in his column, To Start With, though drug trafficking was not his main focus.

Definitive posture

"He participated in numerous journalistic investigations," the board said. "His point of view was always considered the definitive posture of the weekly."

The newspaper's co-founder Hector Felix Miranda was ambushed and killed on April 20, 1988. Two men were convicted in the shooting. One of them worked as a bodyguard at a local race track owned by Jorge Hank Rhon, a businessman from one of Mexico's most powerful political families who is now running for mayor of Tijuana in elections that will be held August 1.

Since the killing, Zeta has published a full-page notice each week under Felix Miranda's name: "Jorge Hank Rhon: Why did your bodyguard Antonio Vera Palestina kill me?" the advertisement asks.

In 1997, the newspaper's publisher, Jesus Blancornelas, was badly wounded in a gangland-style attack that killed his bodyguard and driver, Luis Lauro Valero.

Shortly before he was shot, Blancornelas had written a column blaming David Barron Corona, a reputed lieutenant in the Arellano Felix drug gang, for a machine-gun slaying of two federal agents outside a Tijuana courthouse. Barron was among the men who attacked Blancornelas. He died in the crossfire.

Following the assault on Blancornelas, Ortiz vowed that threats would not deter the staff.

"Obviously, we are not going to change," he said at the time. "We are used to working on deep investigations, and that's not going to change."

- AP