Mexican Journalist Lopez Solana Granted Political Asylum in US Agence France-Presse
go to original June 7, 2013

Being a journalist in Mexico is one of the world's most dangerous professions - no more so than in the country's deadliest city, Ciudad Juarez, where a 21-year-old newspaper intern became the 11th journalist killed nationwide this year. AFPTV heads out on the crime beat with a veteran Juarez cameraman. (AFP News)

MEXICO CITY — The United States has granted political asylum to a Mexican photo-journalist whose parents and a brother were shot to death outside their home in the state of Veracruz, his lawyer said Friday.

Miguel Angel Lopez Solana "has been granted political asylum in the United States," his lawyer Carlos Spector said in a statement.

Lopez's father was a well known political columnist for the Veracruz newspaper Notiver, who died in a hail of bullets in June 2011 at the door to his house. His wife and a 21-year-old son also were killed.

Since 2010, nine journalists have been murdered in Veracruz, a region shaken by drug cartel violence.

Mexico has become one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists, with 86 killed and 18 missing since 2000, according to Reporters Without Borders, which says very few cases have been solved.

The advocacy group last month called on US President Barack Obama to help remove bureaucratic obstacles to giving refuge in the United States to Mexican journalists, bloggers and activists who are threatened.

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