Slain Mexican Journalist’s Family Rejects Government Account, Demands Justice Agence France-Presse
go to original August 24, 2017

A newspaper salesman holds Diario de Acayucán, whose front page focuses on the slaying of Mexican journalist Cándido Ríos Vázquez. (Angel Hernandez/European Pressphoto Agency)

The family of the latest journalist murdered in Mexico demanded a full investigation Wednesday, rejecting the government's account that he was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Candido Rios, a hard-hitting political reporter in the violent state of Veracruz, was gunned down outside a convenience store Tuesday along with a former police chief and his bodyguard.

Rios, 55, is the 10th journalist murdered in Mexico this year, and one of more than 100 killed since 2006 in a wave of violence that has made the country one of the most dangerous in the world for the press.

According to Veracruz deputy interior minister Roberto Campa, the real target in the killing was the ex-police chief shot alongside Rios, Victor Antonio Alegria.

But Rios's daughter Cristina Rios Nieves said she was sure her father, who had been under government protection, was assassinated for his reporting.

"He used his journalism to unmask petty tyrants, denounce crimes by the powerful," Cristina, 30, said as relatives held a vigil over Rios's bullet-riddled body.

"I'm asking for justice, for a proper investigation," Rios's widow, Hilda Nieves Martinez, said through tears at the couple's house in the small eastern town of Hueyapan de Ocampo.

She called for authorities to analyze the death threats that she and others say her husband received from the town's former mayor Gaspar Gomez, a veteran politician whom Rios had accused of corruption.

Read the rest at The Sun Daily

Related: A Crime Reporter Was in a Program to Protect Mexican Journalists. He Was Still Killed (The Los Angeles Times)

Related: Mexico Rights Group Condemns Journalist Killing (Associated Press)

Related: In Violent Mexico, It Is a Deadly Job to Be a Journalist (Agence France-Presse)

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