3 Mexican journalists found dismembered in plastic bags in Veracruz

Three Mexican photojournalists who covered the perilous crime beat in the violence-torn eastern Mexico state of Veracruz were found dismembered and dumped in plastic bags in a canal on Thursday, less than a week after a reporter for an investigative newsmagazine was beaten and strangled in her home in the same state. Press freedom groups reported all three photojournalists temporarily fled the state after receiving threats last year. The organizations called for immediate government action to stop a wave of attacks that has killed at least seven current and former reporters and photographers in Veracruz in nearly two years.

Police in Veracruz on Thursday found the bodies of four people after civilians spotted four suspicious black plastic bags in a wastewater canal, according to the Veracruz state Attorney General’s office. The prosecutor’s office said the slain bodies bore signs of torture and were dismembered. Among the victims were Guillermo Luna Varela, a crime-news photographer in his 20s who was last seen by local reporters covering a car accident on Wednesday afternoon, his uncle Gabriel Huge, who was a photojournalist for Notiver last summer, Luna’s girlfriend Irasema Becerra, and Esteban Rodriguez, a photojournalist for the local newspaper AZ until last summer. State officials said the murders of the four bore hallmarks of organized crime and they would ask federal authorities to help investigate. Mexico has become one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists in recent years, with media members disproportionately targeted as a government offensive against drug cartels and rivalry among crime gangs have brought tens of thousands of killings, kidnappings, and extortion cases.