López Obrador agrees to clarify the crime of Lourdes Maldonado and stop the murders of journalists

The media commotion caused by the last three murders of journalists in less than half a month has mobilized, at least for now, the political and legal authorities.

The President of the Government, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has stressed his obligation to combat the murders of journalists and to thoroughly investigate what has happened in the case of Lourdes Maldonado, especially concerned since the reporter asked him for help personally and in public.

The Baja California prosecutor, for his part, has already given some information on the investigation undertaken: he assures that more than one hitman participated in the crime that ended the life of this professional and, in principle, there are no indications that is related to the death, also shot, of companion Margarito Martínez, which occurred in Tijuana a few days earlier.

But they will investigate.

"We are obliged to clarify this crime [of Maldonado] and prevent the murders of journalists and other citizens from continuing," said the president. And he has reproduced the video in which the journalist asked for his support for the lawsuit he had with the then Morena candidate for governor of Baja California. In her intervention on March 26, 2019, the reporter denounced in the morning conference the business huachicol in the State gas stations and the impossibility of collecting the salary that Bonilla owed her. "He is a strong character in politics, I can do nothing against him." The president offered the collaboration of the coordinator of Social Communication, Jesús Ramírez, at that time, so that "justice is done and there is no influence." "What happened next? Jesus took care of her and won her award,"the president said this morning, and has pointed out that he never requested federal protection for journalists.

Indeed, Maldonado had the support of state police, but the night of the crime, last Sunday, they were not there. The murder, at night, with a bullet in the face, occurred at the moment in which the protection hours had ended, prosecutor Ricardo Iván Carpio declared to the Formula Group: "Unfortunately during the time of the unfortunate event that occurred, it was precisely the moment in which protection was not covered at that moment, and it was a moment when they missed the opportunity to make an attempt on his life.” Carpio has assured that they maintained constant contact with the journalist, who also had a panic button. The prosecutor has declared that "all lines of investigation will be exhausted to clarify" what happened.

Maldonado died of a single bullet, but the casing has not been found and an autopsy is pending to determine the caliber of the weapon.

In statements to Milenio, the prosecutor also said that the investigations indicate that there were three people who participated in the murder, when he arrived at his house in a car from the homage to companero Margarito Martínez, also murdered.

The Governor of Baja California, Marina del Pilar Ávila Olmeda, has requested that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the death of both journalists.

Journalist Lourdes Maldonado during the vigil to demand justice for the death of photographer Margarito Martínez.

Omar Martínez (Dark Room)

Ávila Olmeda has held conversations with López Obrador and on his social networks he pointed out that the three levels of government will work in a coordinated manner. The president has also appealed to the coordination that his government maintains every morning in the Security meetings where several secretariats participate. And she has not criticized the media for having highlighted that the journalist was in the morning asking for help because she feared for her life: "She went to ask the president for protection and look what happened, as if we had not attended to the compañera, as If we hadn't cared. That is the idea they want to project in a perverse way.”

Journalists and society in general are summoned this Tuesday to rallies organized in more than 20 states and cities in the country to repudiate the crimes that constantly shake the lives of journalists in their informative work.

At eight in the afternoon one of them will be held in the capital, in front of the Ministry of the Interior.

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