Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes the 27.5-year sentence for one of the perpetrators in the murder of Mexican journalist Israel Vazquez Rangel, who was shot at least five times while reporting in Salamanca on November 9, 2020, and died several hours later in hospital.
An additional perpetrator in the 2020 murder was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2021. Both convicted men were members of a local criminal gang.
“The second conviction for the brutal murder of Mexico’s Israel Vázquez Rangel is welcome news in a country where most criminals who kill journalists escape justice. However, it is troubling that Vázquez’s work as a journalist was not considered as the principal motive for the attack,” said CPJ’s Mexico representative, Jan-Albert Hootsen.
“Mexican authorities need to be far more proactive in investigating crimes against the press and ending impunity for those who target journalists.” CPJ has documented 28 unsolved journalist murders in Mexico in the past decade—the most of any country on CPJ’s 2022 Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where journalists are murdered regularly and killers go free. The next edition of CPJ’s index will be published in late October.
CPJ is celebrating the courage of Mexican journalist Maria Teresa Montano with our 2023 International Press Freedom Award. She is the founder and editor of The Observer and investigates corruption, abuse of power, and wasteful spending in Mexico state. In 2021, she was abducted and robbed at gunpoint, demonstrating the brutal violence that reporters face in the country.
CPJ welcomes 27.5-year sentence for murder of Mexican reporter Israel Vázquez
