Journalists
Killed in 1998: 24 Confirmed Afghanistan: 1
Mahmoud Saremi, Iranian News Agency (IRNA), August 8, 1998, Mazar-i-Sharif
Saremi, Afghanistan bureau chief for the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, disappeared, along with a group of Iranian diplomats, on August 8, when Taliban fighters seized the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and captured the Iranian consulate. On September 10, a Taliban spokesman admitted that Saremi and eight other Iranians had been found murdered near Mazar-i-Sharif. On August 10, CPJ urged Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar to investigate Saremi's disappearance; after learning of the assassination, CPJ called on him to launch an investigation into the killing.
Angola: 1
Simao Roberto, Journal de Angola, June 5, 1998, Luanda
Roberto, a reporter for the government-owned Journal de Angola, was gunned down in his car outside the newspaper's offices in Luanda as he returned from the presidential palace, where he had covered a meeting of the Council of Ministers. Roberto was a well-known government critic whose colleagues believe was killed because of his journalistic work. Police subsequently presented three suspects they said carried out the attack, but a few days later one of the suspects denied involvement and said he had been forced to confess to get a lesser charge on another offense.
Bangladesh: 1
Saiful Alam Mukul, Daily Runner, August 30, 1998, Jessore
Mukul, editor of the Daily Runner, a Bengali-language newspaper, was returning to his home in Jessore when he was killed by what police say may have been a small, homemade bomb. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Jessore General Hospital. The Daily Runner was known for its exposés of gang activity, political corruption, and human rights abuses and had published stories criticizing guerrilla activity around Jessore.
Mukul halted production of the newspaper in June because of financial difficulties. He wrote a poem for the paper's final issue expressing his frustration with a society grown complacent toward the problems of crime and corruption. After announcing on August 15 that the Daily Runner would resume publication on September 1, Mukul repeatedly told friends, family, and even police that he feared an attack on him was imminent. Journalists around the country were outraged at his murder.
Brazil: 2
Manoel Leal de Oliveira, A Regiao, January 14, 1998, Itabuna
Leal, publisher and editor of A Regiao, the largest weekly in southern Bahia State, was shot dead by assailants who had followed him as he was driving home. Leal was known for his critical reporting on local authorities, and he frequently denounced the mayor of Itabuna and a civil police marshal in the Bahia capital, Salvador, for corruption. Although two witnesses identified one of the assailants, police never questioned him, and the investigation has been closed. CPJ urged President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to launch an investigation by federal police, since local journalists fear that local authorities may have targeted Leal.
José Carlos Mesquita, TV Ouro Verde, March 10, 1998, Ouro Preto do Oeste
Mesquita, host of a news program on TV Ouro Verde, was murdered in Ouro Preto do Oeste, Rondonia State, by three unidentified gunmen. He had just finished recording "Espaço Aberto," a program that featured politically sensitive topics, such as the safety of public transportation. Local journalists are convinced he was killed in retaliation for his work.
Burkina Faso: 1
Norbert Zongo, L'indépendent, December 13, 1998, Ouagadougou
Zongo, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper L'indepéndent, was found dead in his car, along with his brother, his chauffeur, and a fourth, unidentified person. The inside of the vehicle was burnt and the bodies were charred, although the exterior of the car was not burnt. A rear door was riddled with what appeared to be gunshots. The private newsweekly had recently published articles accusing President Blaise Compaore's brother of complicity in the death of his chauffeur. CPJ wrote President Compaore urging that he launch a thorough and impartial investigation into Zongo's death and that he bring the perpetrators to justice.
In early August 2000, three members of President Blaise Compaore's Guard Regiment (RSP) went on trial for the murder of chauffeur David Ouedraogo. The three guards were found guilty of killing David Ouedraogo and sentenced to between 10 and 20 years in jail. The court also awarded the victim's family 200 million francs (US$227,000) in damages. But it would be another six months before authorities acknowledged any link between the death of Ouedraogo and the murder of Norbert Zongo and his friends.
In early January 2001, one of the jailed guardsmen was found dead in his prison cell "after a long disease," according to a government press release. A month later, RSP guardsman Marcel Kafando was indicted for murdering Zongo. Kafando, already serving a 20-year sentence for Ouedraogo's murder, is the first person to be formally accused of killing Norbert Zongo and his companions. The state prosecutor said that the indictment resulted from "contradictions noted in [Kafando's] alibi for December 12 and 13 of 1998." No trial date has yet been set.
Canada: 1
Tara Singh Hayer, Indo-Canadian Times, November 18, 1998, Vancouver
Hayer, publisher of Indo-Canadian Times, Canada's largest and oldest Punjabi weekly, was shot dead in the garage of his home in Vancouver, British Columbia. An outspoken critic of Sikh fundamentalist violence both in Canada and India, Hayer had been partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair after an assassination attempt in 1988. Police have linked the man convicted in that attack to the International Sikh Youth Federation and Babbar Khalsa, two militant international organizations working for an independent Sikh homeland in India. CPJ urged Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien to ensure that Hayerís murder is aggressively investigated and wrote to Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee asking him to cooperate fully with the investigation.
Colombia: 4
Oscar García Calderón, El Espectador, February 22, 1998, Bogotá
García, a bullfighting reporter for the Bogotá daily El Espectador, was forced into a taxi by unidentified assailants as he was leaving the newspaper's offices. He was shot three times, and his body was dumped near the attorney general's office. In the year before his murder, according to colleagues at the paper, García had uncovered links between drug traffickers and bullfighting and had proposed writing a book on the subject. García had asked a colleague to arrange a secret meeting with the attorney general to explain how traffickers used bullfighting and cattle ranching to launder money.
Nelson Carvajal Carvajal, Radio Sur, April 16, 1998, Pitalito
Carvajal, a highly regarded radio journalist in the town of Pitalito, Huila Department, was shot 10 times outside the elementary school where he taught. The gunman and an accomplice escaped by motorcycle, according to several eyewitnesses. Carvajal was the producer of five community programs on Radio Sur, a local affiliate of Radio Cadena Nacional. In addition to programming on topics ranging from health services to rural development, Carvajal provided investigative reporting about alleged government corruption. In one case, Carvajal reported that the former mayor of Pitalito had misappropriated public funds. On January 5, 1999, police arrested the former mayor and two other local politicians, all owners of a local construction company.
Bernabé Cortés Valderrama, Noticias CVN, May 19, 1998, Cali
Cortés, a reporter for the nightly news program "Noticas CVN," was shot and killed as he was emerging from a taxi outside his aunt's home in Cali. The taxi driver was also killed. The gunman fled in a car driven by an accomplice.
In his 18 years as a journalist in Cali, Cortés had covered everything from drug trafficking to government corruption. In 1992, guerrillas from the National Liberation Army (ELN) briefly detained him. Colombian authorities believe that Cortés was killed in retaliation for a story aired on July 11, 1997, about a military operation to destroy a large cocaine laboratory near the town of Corinto, an area controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a second guerrilla group. Cortés' report featured dramatic footage of rebels firing on the soldiers who had destroyed the cocaine lab.
In November, Colombian police charged Julio César Ospina Chavarro with the murder. Police searched his home and found the gun used in the killing and the license plate from the stolen car used by the assailants. An informant told the prosecutor's office that Ospina Chavarro said drug traffickers from Corinto hired him to kill Cortés. Cortés' funeral in Cali drew several thousand people who were outraged by the crime.
Amparo Leonor Jiménez Pallares, "QAP" and "En Vivo", August 11, 1998, Valledupar
Jiménez, a television reporter until just months before her murder, was dropping off her son at school when a gunman shot her three times in the head and then fled on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice. According to the Attorney General's Office, she was killed by members of a paramilitary death squad in retaliation for a story she broadcast in 1996.
Her report concerned the estate of a former government official, Carlos Arturo Marulanda, where paramilitary forces were terrorizing peasants. While she was returning from reporting the story, a group of armed men confiscated her tapes, and upon her return home she began to receive frequent death threats. When, in early 1998, the government did not renew the broadcast license of "QAP," the news program where Jiménez worked, she reported for "En Vivo," broadcast in Valledupar on Canal A.
Later that year, she began full-time work for a government program to reintegrate former guerrillas into Colombian society. She also participated in Redepaz, a national peace advocacy group. In August, Colombian authorities detained Libardo Humberto Prada and charged him with her murder. An arrest warrant was issued for Maralanda in connection with the murder of several peasants who were living on his property. Maralanda's brother, Francisco Alberto, was arrested on the same charges in May.
Congo: 1
Fabien Fortuné Bitoumbo, Radio Liberté, August 29, 1998, Mindouli
Bitoumbo, a journalist with the station Radio Liberté and the former editor-in-chief of the privately owned newspaper La Rue Meurt, was gunned down at point-blank range by an armed group known as the Ninja militia, which was loyal to former prime minister Bernard Koleas. Bituoumbo was on assignment, accompanying Minister of Mining and Industry Michel Mampouya on a trip to Mindouli, west of Brazzaville, when the militia took the group hostage. Bitoumbo was reportedly the only hostage killed.
Ethiopia: 1
Abay Hailu, Agiere, February 9, 1998, Addis Ababa
Abay, a reporter for the weekly Agiere and editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Welafen, died on after nearly one year in prison. Initially refused treatment for a deteriorating medical condition, he was eventually hospitalized but died five days later. He was arrested on February 22, 1997, after publishing a report about the threat of Islamic fundamentalism in Ethiopia. He remained in jail because he was unable to meet bail and was sentenced in November to a year in prison.
Georgia: 1
Georgy Chanya, Resonants, May 26, 1998, Gali
Chanya, a correspondent for the independent Georgian daily newspaper Resonants, was killed while reporting on fighting between Abkhaz rebels and Georgian guerrillas near Gali in the separatist region of Abkhazia. He was following a band of guerrillas and was killed during a raid on their camp. His mutilated body, found on May 26, was identified by personal documents he had been carrying. CPJ called on leaders from both sides in the conflict to protect journalists working in armed conflicts and to guarantee their right to practice their profession.
Mexico: 2
Luis Mario García Rodríguez, La Tarde, February 12, 1998, Mexico City
García, a reporter for the Mexico City daily newspaper La Tarde, was murdered in the Colonia Guerrero neighborhood by several assailants who ambushed him and shot him in the head five times. García had reported extensively on corruption in the national Attorney General's Office and among the Federal Judicial Police. In a series of articles published in late 1997, García reported that members of the Federal Judicial Police were collaborating with the Arellano Félix brothers, who run the Tijuana drug cartel.
A few days before the murder, a Federal Judicial Police officer and an army captain interrogated García about his sources, according to an editor at La Tarde. In a 1997 incident, both García and his young son were shot and injured when García's car was raked with gunfire. Because of widespread suspicion that the Federal Judicial Police may have been involved in the crime, CPJ wrote to President Ernesto Zedillo urging him to appoint a special prosecutor to ensure that the killers are brought to justice.
Philip True, San Antonio (Tex.) Express-News, December 15, 1998, Jalisco
True, 50, was a Mexico City correspondent for the San Antonio Express-News. On November 28, 1998, he embarked on a 10-day trip to report on the Huichol Indians, an indigenous population that lives in a mountainous area stretching across Nayarit, Jalisco, and Durango states.
The journalist was last seen alive on December 4 in the village of Salmotita. On December 16, after an intensive search by the Mexican military, True's body was found in a shallow grave partially covered with rocks at the bottom of a ravine. Neither his wedding ring nor his watch had been taken, suggesting that robbery was not a motive.
On December 26, 1998, authorities arrested Juan Chivarra de la Cruz and his brother-in-law Miguel Hern·ndez de la Cruz, both Huichol Indians, and charged them with True's murder. Under questioning, Chivarra and Hernández confessed to murdering True because he had taken photographs without their permission. The journalist's belongings, including his camera, binoculars, and backpack, were found at the suspects' homes.
When the two men were brought into court, however, they acknowledged killing True but claimed they had acted in self-defense. They also claimed that their confession had been extracted under torture. Jalisco State Attorney General Gerardo Octavio Solís Gómez has repeatedly denied these claims.
Additional evidence points to the suspects' culpability. In 1999, a Newsweek reporter found a notebook belonging to True in a warehouse where case evidence was stored. In one entry, True described an encounter with a Huichol man named Juan, possibly a reference to Chivarra.
Both suspects have repeatedly given contradictory statements in interviews with the San Antonio Express-News. While they initially contended that they had never seen True, they later admitted to meeting him. Then in an interview published on August 8, 2001, both men claimed they had seen the journalist but never talked to him.
Mexican authorities have issued three separate forensic reports since True's body was found. The first, based on an autopsy by Jalisco State medical examiners, found that True had been strangled with his own bandana and sustained a head injury that was not attributable to a fall.
The second report, based on an autopsy by the Federal Attorney General's Office, concluded that True died from blows to his head and body and from edema (accumulation of fluid in the lungs), most likely after suffering an accidental fall caused by heavy drinking. Both autopsies found a high concentration of alcohol in True's blood, a finding consistent with advanced decomposition, according to forensic experts consulted by the Express-News.
It remains unclear why federal authorities ordered a second autopsy. True's already decomposed body was essentially dismembered during the first autopsy, making the possibility of drawing accurate conclusions from a second autopsy difficult at best.
In March 2000, the third forensic report, which is required under Mexican law when two autopsies yield different results, found that True's death was caused by a pulmonary edema resulting from a head injury. This conclusion was based solely on the examiner's analysis of the first two autopsy reports.
On August 3, 2001, Mexican Judge José Luis Reyes Contreras acquitted Chivarra and Hernández and ordered their release. On August 7, Jalisco Attorney General Solís Gómez said there was enough evidence to convict the two men and added that he would appeal the verdict.
Judge Reyes Contreras has been quoted as saying that his decision to release the men was based on the second autopsy report, which concluded that True's death was accidental. The judge's ruling did not account for the fact that True's belongings were found in the two suspects' homes or that his body was hidden in a grave near the death site.
The Jalisco State Attorney General's Office appealed the acquittals in a September 25, 2001, hearing before a panel of three magistrates from the State Supreme Court of Justice. On May 30, 2002, a three-judge appeals panel sentenced Chivarra and Hernández to 13-year prison terms for True's murder. The unanimous ruling overturned an August 2001 verdict that had acquitted the two men.
In February 2003, a federal court overturned the 13-year sentences on procedural grounds. In November 2003, both the private investigator who worked to win the release of the men and the U.S. citizen who funded portions of their defense said Chivarra and Hernández had privately confessed to killing True and should be brought to justice.
On April 27, 2004, a three-judge panel of the Jalisco State Supreme Court convicted the men, sentenced them to 20 years in prison each, and ordered each to pay 117,315 Mexican pesos (U$10,000) in damages, Jorge Ochoa, the lawyer of True's widow, Martha True, told CPJ.
The ruling, issued by judges Celso Rodríguez González, Gustavo Flores Martínez, and Guillermo Valdez Angulo, also ordered the capture of the two men, who are now free on bond and are believed to be living in the area of Sierra Madre.
Chivarra and Herná ndez can file an appeal (recurso de amparo), but Ochoa told CPJ he doubts they will.
Nigeria: 2
Tunde Oladepo, The Guardian, February 26, 1998, Abeokuta
Oladepo, a senior correspondent with The Guardian newspaper of Lagos, was murdered by five masked gunmen, who entered his home early in the morning and shot him to death in front of his wife and children. Nothing was removed from Oladepo's residence, ruling out robbery as a motive. Oladepo was until recently bureau chief of The Guardian's state office in Ogun and was covering political affairs. Co-workers believe he was murdered because of his work as a journalist.
Okezie Amaruben, Newsservice, September 2, 1998, Enugu
Amaruben, publisher of Newsservice magazine, was shot and killed by an Enugu State police officer. Amaruben was checking on a printing job being done for him in a shop when police officers verbally and physically attacked him. One placed a pistol to his forehead and hit him with the gun after he had identified himself as a journalist. People at the scene told the police officers that Amaruben was not the person they were looking for. He was being forced into a police vehicle when the officer fired his gun and the bullet pierced Amaruben's skull. Authorities confirmed that the officer who shot Amaruben was arrested shortly after the murder.
Philippines: 1
Rey Bancayrin, Radio DXLL, March 30, 1998, Zamboanga City
Bancayrin, a well-known broadcaster for Radio DXLL in the southern region of Mindanao, was shot to death while on the air. Two unidentified gunmen entered the broadcast booth while he was talking to a listener and shot him three times at point-blank range. The killers calmly left the station and escaped. Bancayrin was known for his outspoken attacks on local corruption, illegal logging, and drug smugglers. The Zamboanga Press Club called his death "a blow to press freedom." In a letter to President Fidel V. Ramos, CPJ pointed out that Bancayrin was the 33rd journalist killed in the line of duty in the Philippines since the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and called for an immediate investigation into his murder.
Russia: 2
Larisa Yudina, Sovietskaya Kalmykia Segodnya, June 8, 1998, Elista
Yudina, editor of Sovietskaya Kalmykia Segodnya, the only alternative news outlet in Kalmykia, was found dead of multiple stab wounds and a fractured skull on the outskirts of Elista, capital of the Russian autonomous republic of Kalmykia. Yudina, a political activist, was frequently harassed and threatened for her exposés of local corruption and hard-line rule by the republic's president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. On the day of her disappearance, June 7, she went to meet a source who was to provide evidence of financial improprieties by local firms. Roreign and Russian press freedom groups had documented Yudina's troubles with Kalmyk authorities as a journalist and as local leader of the liberal opposition Yabloko party. The public outcry over her death caused the federal prosecutor to take over the case, and three suspects were arrested.
Anatoly Levin-Utkin, Yurichichesky Peterburg Segodnya, August 24, 1998, St. Petersburg
Levin-Utkin, deputy editor of the weekly newspaper Yuridichesky Peterburg Segodnya, was beaten unconscious on August 21 in the doorway of his apartment and robbed of his briefcase, which contained information for the next installment in an investigative series on rivalries between local financial and political figures. Cash and personal valuables were also taken.
The journalist suffered severe brain trauma and died on August 24 without ever having regained consciousness. The newspaper's editor said in an August 25 news conference that he believed the murder was connected to the series of investigative stories on the customs and secret services published in the first two issues of the 3-week-old newspaper, for which Levin-Utkin had done research and reporting. The editor said he had received phone calls demanding the names of those who worked on the series but had refused to divulge the information. Levin-Utkin had just finished collecting documents and photos for the third installment of the series on the day he was attacked. In a letter to President Boris Yeltsin, CPJ condemned the fatal beating and decried the intimidation of journalists and the climate of fear in Russia that stifles media freedom.
Rwanda: 1
Wilson Ndayambadje, National Rwanda Radio and TV, January 28 1998, Gisenyi
Ndayambadje, a radio and television reporter in Gisenyi, was beaten to death by Emmanuel Rutayisire, a national army soldier. On January 29, Rutayisire was charged with the murder, convicted, and sentenced to death by a military tribunal. He was executed the same day.
Sierra Leone: 1
Edward Smith, BBC, April 13, 1998, Banbanduhun
Smith, a Sierra Leonean citizen and a reporter for the BBC, was killed while traveling with West African peacekeeping soldiers when Rebel United Front forces ambushed their vehicles. Smith had covered the northeastern region (Makeni and Kono districts) of Sierra Leone since the Armed Forces Ruling Council took power in May 1997. He had previously worked as a reporter for the independent newspaper Vision and as editor of The Storm newspaper.
Thailand: 1
Sayomchai Vijitwittayapong, Matichon, January 10, 1998, Phichit
Sayomchai, an investigative reporter for Bangkok's third-largest daily newspaper, Matichon, was found dead of a gunshot wound in his car in the city of Phichit in central Thailand. He was last seen leaving his Bangkok home on January 9 with a tape recorder and camera on his way to meet a village headman. Colleagues believe he was killed because of his reporting on corruption in the construction industry. He had received death threats and had reportedly refused a bribe to drop his investigation.
Colombia: 5
Didier Aristizábal Galeano, Radio journalist, March 2, 1998, Cali
Aristizbal was shot to death in Cali after leaving the Santiago de Cali University. Local journalists report that he was followed by two men riding a Yamaha motorcycle. They shot him nine times when he stopped for a traffic light and then fled the scene. Aristizábal worked as a political reporter for radio station Todelar in Cali until 1994, when he joined the faculty of Santiago de Cali University as a professor of journalism. In 1996, he took a position as chief press officer for the Cali Fair, a bullfighting tournament. At the end of 1997, he helped the National Police in Cali set up a radio news station.
José Abel Salazar Serna, Radio journalist, March 14, 1998, Manizales
Salazar, host of the radio program "Juventud en Acción" (Youth in Action) on the Todelar station in the central Colombian town of Manizales, was found dead in his apartment in Manizales. He had been stabbed 15 times. Salazar had broadcast appeals for peace and coexistence.
Néstor Villar Jiménez, Former journalist, September 11, 1998, Villavicencio
Villar, a prominent journalist and former congressman, was killed by motorcycle gunmen in Villavicencio, capital of Meta Department. Villar had just attended a meeting of mayors and had gone to a bar. There, an unidentified individual shot him in the head three times. The assailant fled on a motorcycle, driven by an accomplice. Villar's journalistic career started with the local radio station Macarena. He then worked as an economic reporter for the newspapers La República and El Siglo, as well as for the magazine Síntesis, all of which are Bogotá-based. He started his political career around 1995. He had been a member of the lower legislative assembly in the conflict-ridden Vaupés Department. At the time of his death, he was working as a contractor for the municipality of Mit, capital of the Vaupés Department. Although Villar wasn't working as a journalist at the time of his death, local journalists consider that he may have been targeted because of his stance against drug trafficking during his career as a journalist.
Saúl Alcaraz, October 14, 1998, Medellín
Alcaraz, the spokesperson for Instituto Mi Río, an environmental group in Medellín, was shot dead at his home while watching a soccer game at 8:30 in the evening. According to local journalists, several men claiming to be police came to Alcaraz's home and shot him six times when he resisted being forced into a car. Alcaraz, 29, was a former correspondent for the regional broadcast network Teleantoquia.
José Arturo Guapacha, El Panorama, October 15, 1998, Cartago
Guapacha, editor of El Panorama, was fatally shor inside a car repair shop in the town of Cartago, in western Valle del Cauca Department, a region where drug-related violence is common. Guapacha, 39, had worked as a journalist for 18 years. He started his career at radio stations Radio Cadena Nacional and Todelar. At the time of his death, he was editor of El Panorama, a local magazine he founded in 1988. Local journalists informed CPJ that while there is no evidence that Guapacha's death was related to his work as a journalist, he had written stories criticizing drug traffickers and had published the names of people who owed back taxes to the municipal government.
Democratic Republic of Congo: 1
Belmonde Magloire Missinhoun, La Pointe Congo, September 3, 1998, Kinshasha
Missinhoun, owner of the independent financial newspaper La Pointe Congo, was last seen when he was arrested shortly after a traffic accident with a military vehicle in Kinshasa and transported to an unknown location. Police investigations into the journalist's disappearance have yielded no results to date. Missinhoun, who is originally from Benin, has lived in Kinshasa for approximately 30 years. La Pointe Congo has not published since the fall of president Mobutu Sese Seko. It is feared that the journalist, who had close ties to the Mobutu regime, has been killed.
Ethiopia: 1
Tesfaye Tadesse, Mestawet and Lubar, June 7, 1998, Addis Ababa
Tesfaye, owner and editor of the now-defunct magazine Mestawet and the newspaper Lubar, was murdered in front of his home. He was stabbed and hacked to death by two unidentified individuals using a knife and a machete. The attackers escaped the scene of the crime in a DX Toyota. Tesfaye, a lawyer by training, was an activist and member of the Ethiopian Peoples Rights Council. He was previously jailed by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front in 1993.
Iran: 1
Majid Sharif, Iran-e-Farda, November 24, 1998, Tehran
Sharif, a writer and political commentator who had contributed to the monthly magazine Iran-e-Farda, was found dead in a Tehran morgue on November 24, 1998; he had been missing since November 20. Sharif reportedly died of a heart attack, but the circumstances of his death remain unclear. His death coincided with the disappearance and death of four other Iranian writers and critics in November and December. In a shocking admission in January, Iran's Intelligence Ministry announced that several rogue agents were behind "the hateful murders which took place recently." It did not specify whether Sharif was one of those murdered by intelligence agents.
Pakistan: 1
Carlos Mavroleon, free-lancer, August 27, 1998, Peshawar
Mavroleon, a free-lance television producer and cameraman on assignment for the CBS news program "60 Minutes," was found dead in a hotel room in Peshawar of an apparent drug overdose, according to Pakistani officials. Though the government of Pakistan concluded that the cause of death was "heroin poisoning (self)," some colleagues and family members believe Mavroleon may have been killed for his journalistic work.
Mavroleon had arrived in Peshawar on August 23 on assignment to film damage from the recent U.S. cruise missile attacks on the Afghan border town of Khost, about 180 miles to the southwest. The U.S. intended to hit training camps run by Osama bin Laden, whom Washington had identified as the suspected mastermind behind the August 7 attacks on U.S. embassies in eastern Africa.
On August 25, Mavroleon was detained and jailed overnight in Miranshah, a town in North Waziristan on the Afghan border. After being interrogated by Pakistani agents from the Intelligence Bureau and Inter-Services Intelligence, he was released on the afternoon of August 26 and sent back to Peshawar by bus.
In phone messages to a "60 Minutes" producer on August 25, Mavroleon had said he was "in terrible trouble" and that "they're on to me in a big way."
On the morning of August 27, Mavroleon met with Peter Jouvenal, a British cameraman and old friend, and Rahimullah Yusufzai, Peshawar bureau chief for the Pakistani daily The News. They joked about a report on Mavroleon's arrest that had appeared in the Urdu-language press labeling the journalist a "spy."
They were among the last people to see him alive.
Mavroleon died of "asphyxia due to heroin (diacetyl morphine) intoxication" at around 6 p.m. that evening, according to the official autopsy report.
Peru: 2
Isabel Chumpitaz Panta, Radio Satélite, April 6, 1998, La Unión
José Amaya Jacinto, Radio Satélite, April 6, 1998, La Unión
At 8 p.m., at least 12 men armed with pistols and automatic weapons entered the property of the Chumpitaz family in the district of La Unión in the northern department of Piura. The assailants asked Chumpitaz if she was the journalist, and when she answered affirmatively, they shot her point blank.
Her husband, José Amaya Jacinto, was shot when he tried to intervene. Her mother, Rosa Panta de Chumpitaz, was beaten after she gave the assailants her jewelry in an attempt to stop them. Chumpitaz's brother Walter was stabbed in the chest and severely wounded. Another brother, Carlos, was shot in both legs. Local authorities, however, described the attack as a robbery, noting that the men fled with television sets, jewelry, money, and the family's pickup truck, which was abandoned in El Indio, in the district of Castilla.
Chumpitaz was well known for her work with media in Piura. She produced "La Voz del Pueblo" (The People's Voice), a show broadcast daily on Radio Satélite, which advocated peasants' rights. She was also known as an opponent of President Alberto Fujimori's re-election bid.
Her husband was a regular contributor to "La Voz del Pueblo." Walter Chumpitaz Panta produces another daily program on Radio Satélite called "Sombrero de Paja" (Straw Hat), which also advocates peasant rights.
Relatives of the slain journalists informed CPJ that a police officer visited them on April 8, the day the victims were buried, and urged them not to pursue the investigation. On April 20, outraged colleagues marched in the streets of Piura to protest the assassination.
Philippines: 1
Nelson Catipay, DXMY Radio, April 16, 1998, Cotabato City
Catipay, a correspondent for radio station DXMY in Cotabato City in Mindanao, was shot nine times by two unidentified men riding with Catipay in a minivan traveling to the town of Sultan Kuarat, according to police reports. His killers fled the scene. Before joining DXMY in February, Catipay was a commentator at another radio station, where he denounced abuses and corruption in government. Police suspect his death may be related to a land dispute in the area. CPJ wrote to President Fidel Ramos to urge an immediate investigation into the murder.
Russia: 1
Ivan Fedyunin, Bryanskie Izvestia, March 31, 1998, Bryansk
Fedyunin, a political reporter with the local Bryanskie Izvestia newspaper who covered the Duma and regional national political events, was stabbed to death in his apartment. Police and colleagues discovered his body on April 2. Co-workers at the newspaper say he had recently published articles about alleged criminal activities of local companies involved in renovating apartments and believe his death was related to his personal life. Police reportedly arrested a suspect but have not identified him.