US Ambassador Tony Garza condemned threats against US reporters amid intelligence reports that drug traffickers were planning to kill foreign journalists along the US-Mexico border.
In a statement on Friday, Garza condemned threats against journalists as "an attempt to intimidate them from reporting the truth."
A US Embassy official said on condition of anonymity that US law enforcement officials have reliable information that drug traffickers are planning to target foreign journalists.
While past attacks have targeted local reporters, the threat against foreign journalists indicated that drug traffickers are becoming bolder in their attempts to silence news reports on their activities.
"We will work with authorities in the US and Mexico to do everything possible to ensure the safety of American reporters working along both sides of our common border," Garza said.
The embassy official said the threats appeared concentrated around the violent city of Nuevo Laredo, where a new police chief was gunned down two years ago hours after taking office, and hundreds of people have been killed in drug violence since.
Erik Vasys, spokesman for the FBI in San Antonio, Texas, said that "at this time, we are not aware of a specific threat to harm or injure any specific person or media entity."
"The FBI will use all of its resources to protect the free press from violence and intimidation," Vasys said.
The San Antonio Express-News pulled its correspondent, Mariano Castillo, out of Laredo, Texas, across the border from Nuevo Laredo, late on Thursday in light of the threats.
In a story posted on the newspaper's Web site on Friday, editor Robert Rivard said the paper was told by an official that a drug cartel was seeking to put out a hit on an American reporter in Laredo.
"We don't know that the report is credible and we hope it isn't," he said. "But until we feel comfortable knowing that, we're going to err on the side of caution."
Eloy Aguilar, president of the Foreign Correspondents Association in Mexico, sent out an e-mail advising foreign correspondents to "be extremely careful and security conscious."
Aguilar, who retired last year as Associated Press bureau chief in Mexico City, said the warning was "based on journalists who have been there and were told by sources on both sides of the border that there was a threat that was considered serious enough to be taken into account."
A television crew for the TV Azteca network disappeared in Monterrey in May, and an Acapulco correspondent was gunned down in April.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS