Journalist who reported on crime attacked in Peru

Peruvian journalist Jorge Alberto Moncada Mino was attacked by unidentified assailants in the city of Chiclayo in the northern department of Lambayeque on May 24, according to news reports. Moncada, who reports for the daily El Ciclón de Chiclayo and Radio Caliente, was entering a store near his home to buy bread when two men got out of a vehicle and beat him with the butt of a gun and a wrench. The journalist was hospitalized with several bone fractures and wounds to his abdomen and head. 

Moncada told the local press freedom organization IPYS that his assailants warned him to stop reporting on “Viejo Paco,” (Old Paco) the alias of Ángel León Arévalo, the alleged kingpin of the organized crime group “La Gran Familia” (The Big Family), who was arrested and placed in preventative detention three months ago. The journalist said he believed the attack was linked to his reporting that questioned the thoroughness of the prosecution against Arévalo, according to news reports. Moncada told reporters he had received dozens of anonymous death threats via text message in the days before the attack.