| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico 
Mexico Names New Prosecutor for Attacks on Media
 E. Eduardo Castillo - Associated Press
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February 16, 2010
Mexico City — Mexico has replaced its special prosecutor for crimes against the media amid complaints that the country is becoming one of the world's deadliest places for journalists and that most killings have gone unresolved.
Gustavo Salas, who previously worked for the federal crimes investigation unit, replaces Octavio Orellana, the Attorney General's Office announced in a statement Monday.
The agency did not give a reason for the replacement. However, it comes a month after the governmental National Human Rights Commission complained that federal and state authorities have not shown results in investigating the killings of journalists.
The commission says 60 journalists have been killed since 2000, including three this year.
The most recent was Jorge Ochoa Martinez, the director of a small newspaper in southwestern Guerrero state, who was shot in the face as he left a food stand Jan. 29. Two weeks earlier, the body of a newspaper reporter in the northern city of Saltillo was found along with a threatening message of the type often left by drug gangs.
Several international media watchdog groups have named Mexico the most dangerous country in the Americas for journalists. Some Mexican media outlets have toned down their coverage of drug gang violence - or stopped reporting on it altogether - out of security concerns.
Almost none of the killings have been resolved.
Orellana, the former special prosecutor, said in December of 2008 that only three of the 25 reporters killed in the previous two years were targeted because of their work. He insisted that Mexico's image as an especially dangerous country for journalists is based on erroneous information. He has not made similar comments about more recent killings.
Mexican authorities are also restructuring the special prosecutor's office to make it more effective, said Ricardo Trotti, the free press director of the Miami-based Inter American Press Association, or IAPA, which includes 1,380 publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Trotti said IAPA members were told of the changes during a meeting Monday with Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont and Attorney General Arturo Chavez.
Trotti said the special prosecutor will answer directly to the attorney general, rather than to human rights unit of the agency. He said the change is meant to give the special prosecutor's office investigative and accusatory powers it now lacks.
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