Slain Mexican reporter was asked to remove tweets critical of government, coworker says: “Our colleagues feel very exposed”

Mexico’s president mentioned Thursday that the killing of a reporter within the northern border state of Tamaulipas – the twelfth to this point this yr in Mexico – could also be linked to native politics.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador mentioned federal prosecutors have taken over the investigation of the killing of reporter Antonio de la Cruz as a crime against freedom of expression.

De la Cruz’s daughter was critically wounded within the assault Wednesday within the Tamaulipas state capital and was combating for her life at an area hospital.

On Thursday, one of the reporter’s colleagues mentioned De la Cruz had been asked, apparently by state authorities, to remove some of his tweets.

“On Twitter, Antonio criticized the state government a lot and criticized the government,” mentioned fellow reporter Carlos Manuel Juárez. “He even told me at one point that they had asked him to take down some critical tweets that he put up.”

Juárez described the concern that reporters in Tamaulipas feel after the killing. The state has lengthy been dominated by drug cartels.

“It is very dangerous not to know where the attack came from, and our colleagues feel very exposed. We don’t know if it is simply a political matter,” Juárez mentioned on the president’s morning press briefing.

López Obrador mentioned “the decision to take over the case (by federal prosecutors) was made because it became known that there had been criticism of local authorities.”

De la Cruz, 47, was a reporter for the native newspaper Expreso for nearly three a long time.

The newspaper issued a print version Thursday in black, with De la Cruz’s picture and the phrase “Justice!” on the entrance web page.

“This is clearly an attack on freedom of expression,” mentioned Expreso’s director, Miguel Domínguez.

“We live in a state where there has been a wave of violence for more than a decade, and that has also affected the press,” Domínguez mentioned. “Unfortunately, we have had to become used to working in these conditions and take extra precautions, and consider carefully whether we are going to publish something or not.”

Almost all of Tamaulipas’ current governors have confronted accusations of corruption, starting from cash laundering to aiding drug cartels.

De la Cruz’s demise introduced to 12 the quantity of journalists killed this yr within the nation, the deadliest for the Mexican press and the deadliest for any nation exterior a warfare zone.

De la Cruz was shot in a automotive in entrance of his home in Ciudad Victoria, the state capital, by a person on a motorbike. His daughter was within the automobile with him and was wounded.

Expreso covers every kind of news within the metropolis, together with safety points. De la Cruz reported on rural and social subjects akin to water shortages.

He additionally lined the Citizens Movement political celebration and its native deputy, Gustavo Cardenas Gutiérrez, who condemned the killing.

Expreso has been focused over time. In 2012, one of the worst years of drug cartel violence, a automotive bomb exploded in entrance of the newspaper’s constructing. In 2018, a cooler with a human head inside was left on the newspaper, with a warning not to report on violence within the metropolis.

Other Mexican journalists killed in 2022

Last month, two colleagues at a news website had been shot to demise within the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. The Veracruz State Prosecutor’s Office mentioned it was investigating the killings of Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi and Sheila Johana García Olivera, the director and a reporter, respectively, of the net news website El Veraz in Cosoleacaque.

In March, prosecutors within the western state of Michoacan mentioned reporter Armando Linares was shot to demise at a house within the city of Zitacuaro. His killing got here six weeks after the slaying of a colleague, Roberto Toledo, from the identical outlet, Monitor Michoacan. It was Linares who introduced Toledo’s demise Jan. 31 in a video posted to social media.

In early March, gunmen killed Juan Carlos Muñiz, who lined crime for the net news website Testigo Minero within the state of Zacatecas.

Jorge Camero, the director of an internet news website who was till just lately a municipal employee within the northern state of Sonora, was killed in late February.

In early February, Heber López, director of the net news website Noticias Web, was shot to demise within the southern state of Oaxaca.

Reporter Lourdes Maldonado López was discovered shot to demise inside her automotive in Tijuana on Jan. 23. In a news convention in 2019, Maldonado Lopez advised Mexico’s president she feared for her life.

Reporter José Luis Gamboa was killed within the Gulf coast state of Veracruz on Jan. 10.

Crime photographer Margarito Martínez was gunned down exterior his Tijuana dwelling on Jan. 17.  Guillermo Arias, whose pictures chronicle life and demise within the streets of Tijuana, labored with Martinez for a few years.

He recalled the painful expertise of masking the homicide of his pal and fellow journalist.

“His daughter arrived and asked me not to photograph her dad’s body,” Arias advised CBS News.