Journalists & Media Staff Killed in 2009
Ex-mayor absolved in journalist's slaying in Peru
Source : AP 08.02.2010
LIMA, Peru -- A Peruvian court on Monday absolved the former mayor of a jungle city in the 2004 killing of a reporter who accused him of cocaine trafficking.
The Lima court ruled there was contradictory testimony and insufficient evidence to convict Luis Valdez Villacorta, the former mayor of Coronel Portillo, the Amazon region containing the city of Pucallpa.
Valdez was accused of ordering the killing of Alberto Rivera, president of the local journalist federation and host of a radio program.
Rivera had accused Valdez of masterminding a 551-kilogram (1,215-pound) cocaine shipment hidden in a cargo of plywood that police seized in 2003 in Lima's port of Callao. The plywood was being shipped by Valdez's lumber company, but a criminal investigation against him was later dropped.
Less than 24 hours before his murder, Rivera repeated his allegations against Valdez and said if any harm should befall him, authorities should hold Valdez responsible. Rivera was killed by gunmen in his office.
Rivera's daughter, Patricia Rivera, said she was outraged by the ruling.
"Journalism is at risk in this country," she told reporters. "This shows that impunity rules in this country, because money can buy consciences."
Valdez was absolved in an earlier trial in the jungle province of Ucayali, but that ruling was annulled because of irregularities and a new trial was ordered in Lima. Prosecutors had sought 20 years for Valdez.
© 2010 The Associated Press
Croatian editor's murder suspect arrested in Bosnia
Source : BBC Monitoring 02.02.2010
Original Headline: Croatian editor's murder suspect arrested in Bosnia
Text of report in English by Croatian state news agency HINA
Sarajevo, Feb 2 (Hina) - Bojan Guduric, who is suspected of involvement in the 2008 assassination of Croatian journalist and Nacional weekly owner Ivo Pukanic, has been arrested in Bosnia-Hercegovina and is in custody in Sarajevo, Hina learned at the Bosnian State Court on Tuesday.
Guduric was arrested by Bosnian Serb entity police yesterday on an international warrant. He is expected to be questioned by a Bosnian State Court judge later today.
The State Court told Hina there were two warrants for Guduric's arrest, one issued by Croatia and one by Serbia.
Source: HINA news agency, Zagreb, in English 1047 gmt 2 Feb 10
BBC Mon alert EU1 EuroPol MD1 Media mb
Journalist's murderer jailed in Philippines: media groups
Source : AFP 29.01.2010
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines, Jan 29, 2010 (AFP) - An alleged hired gun has been jailed for 40 years in the central Philippines for the killing of a radio journalist, domestic media organisations said Friday.
The verdict was just the sixth time anyone has been sentenced for killing a journalist since President Gloria Arroyo came to power in 2001, the media groups said, despite nearly 100 media workers being murdered over that time.
A court in Cebu city this week found Mohammad Maulana guilty of the fatal February 2005 shooting of DXKP station broadcaster Edgar Amoro, 46, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).
The NUJP and press clubs based in the southern city of Pagadian, the victim's hometown, thanked the court for the verdict.
But they urged the authorities to go after those behind the killing of Amoro, who is suspected to have been killed for being an eyewitness to a colleague's murder there in 2002.
"The truth of the matter is that the real masterminds of these killings were not as yet been brought to court for them to pay for the crime," the media groups said in a joint statement.
The Philippines is regarded as one of the world's most dangerous places for journalists, partly due to a culture of impunity for those in power that allows them to commit crimes with little risk of punishment.
Thirty provincial journalists were among 57 people murdered elsewhere in the southern Philippines in November last year in an attack blamed on a local political rivalry. A local Muslim politician is on trial for the murders.
The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists said last year's massacre in Maguindanao province was the deadliest attack on reporters anywhere in the world since at least 1992, when it began keeping records.
A total of 134 journalists have been murdered in the Philippines since the fall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, with 97 of the deaths occurring since President Gloria Arroyo came to power in 2001, local press groups say.
©2010 AFP All rights reserved.
Philippine gunman jailed for journalist murder
29.01.2010
Original headline: Philippine court jails gunman of slain journalist
MANILA (Reuters) - A Philippine court sentenced to life imprisonment an unemployed man it found guilty for the 2005 murder of a radio commentator on the southern island of Mindanao, a media watchdog said on Friday.
It was only the sixth conviction among nearly 100 cases of murdered Filipino journalists since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo came to power in 2001, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) said.
On Tuesday, a local court found Muhammad "Madix" Maulana guilty of killing Edgar Amoro on February 2, 2005 in Pagadian City on the southern island of Mindanao, rejecting his alibi he was at a wedding party in another town.
"It's the fulfillment of my promise to my dad to find justice for his death," Edel Grace Amoro, the radio announcer's daughter, said in a statement on Friday. "It serves as another breakthrough in the prosecution service's efficiency in handling media murder cases, notwithstanding the many challenges we face in the name of truth and justice."
Amoro, who was an eyewitness in the murder of another radio reporter in Pagadian City in May 2002, was walking home from a public high school where he was teaching when Maulana and two other men shot him several times.
Police said Amoro was targeted because he had identified the gunman in the killing of the radio reporter. The gunman in that 2002 killing, a police officer, was found guilty in November 2005 and was given a life sentence.
Local media groups said about 100 journalists have been killed since 2001, including 30 who were massacred in a southern town in November 2009. Only five of those cases have led to convictions, prior to the one this week in Mindanao.
(Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
© Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved.
Klebnikov murder suspect cleared
28.01.2010
Original Headline: Suspect Cleared in Klebnikov's Murder
By Nikolaus von Twickel
Investigators have dropped charges against a Chechen suspect in the killing of Paul Klebnikov, the former editor of Forbes Russian edition, a news report said Wednesday.
Magomed Edilsultanov showed up voluntarily for questioning at the Moscow offices of the Investigative Committee, Rosbalt.ru reported. After questioning, he was released and the murder charges were dropped, the report said, citing an unidentified law enforcement source.
An Investigative Committee spokeswoman refused to immediately comment on the report.
Edilsultanov was among a group of Chechens accused by police of participating in the killing of Klebnikov, a U.S. journalist who was shot outside his office in an apparent contract hit in July 2004. He was 41.
Investigators believe that Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev, a colorful Chechen businessman whom Klebnikov interviewed extensively for his 2003 book "Conversations With a Barbarian," ordered Klebnikov's killing.
Nukhayev has also been linked to the 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya. Investigators are currently preparing formal charges against him, Rosbalt said.
Two other suspects in Klebnikov's killing, Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev, were acquitted in a 2006 trial, while Nukhayev and another Chechen suspect, Magomed Dukuzov, remain at large.
Last December, yet another suspect, Marat Valeyev, was released from custody and cleared of charges because of an absence of evidence.
Edilsultanov was also accused in connection with the killing of former Chechen Deputy Prime Minister Yan Sergunin, who was shot in Moscow just two weeks before Klebnikov's murder.
"The theory that he took part in the two high-profile murders could not be confirmed," the law enforcement source told Rosbalt.
Meanwhile, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov accused self-exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky of ordering the killing of Natalya Estemirova, the Chechen human rights campaigner who was shot last year.
"Estemirova's murder was engineered by the same person who killed Politkovskaya and [Kremlin critic Alexander] Litvinenko. I am absolutely convinced that this was the work of Berezovsky," Kadyrov said in an interview with RT state television published Wednesday.
Berezovsky previously has been linked by Russian officials to Politkovskaya's murder. He denies wrongdoing.
Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, the suspected organizer of Politkovskaya's murder, said last year that investigators had urged him to falsely incriminate either Kadyrov or Berezovsky.
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