Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Second homicide charge laid in case of Sinaloa journalist

One of the main suspects in the murder of Sinaloa journalist Javier Valdez has been charged with homicide, the federal Attorney General’s office (PGR) said.

Heriberto Picos Barraza, also known as “El Koala,” was arrested in April in connection with Valdez’s murder in May last year and for ties with a drug trafficking organization that operates in Sinaloa and Baja California.

The attorney general is seeking a 50-year prison term, the maximum under the Sinaloa criminal code.

Two other men have been implicated in Valdez’s murder. One has already been charged.

Valdez, 50, was a co-founder of the Sinaloa newspaper Río Doce, where he chronicled drug-trafficking. He was ambushed outside his office in Culiacán and shot 12 times.

Shortly before his death he interviewed Dámaso “El Licenciado” López, a senior official in the Sinaloa Cartel and a member of one of two factions vying for control of the drug gang. The other faction was — and possibly still is — headed by “Los Chapitos,” sons of former cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

According to Valdez’s colleagues at Río Doce, Guzmán’s sons had pressured the journalist not to publish his interview with López. That was in February 2017. He was killed three months later, after he published the story.

Valdez won the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2011.

In his acceptance speech he described the challenge of working in Mexico.

“To work in journalism is to walk an invisible line drawn by the bad guys — who are in drug trafficking and in the government — in a field strewn with explosives.”

Source: El Sol de Mexico (sp)

Have something to say? Paid Subscribers get all access to make & read comments.
Sinaloa violence

20 killed in gruesome massacre attributed to ‘Los Mayos’ in Culiacán

0
The massacre of 20 people, five of whom were decapitated, is the deadliest single episode of violence of what has widely been described as a "war" between "Los Chapitos" and "Los Mayos."
dancers in traditional costumes

Profits from this year’s Guelaguetza festival to help Oaxaca rebuild from Hurricane Erick

0
Oaxaca Governor Salomón Jara announced on Friday that all profits from the Guelaguetza festival, the state’s preeminent Indigenous cultural event, will be used to reconstruct regions destroyed by Hurricane Erick.
Tecate forest fires in Baja California

Conafor reports Tecate blaze is 75% contained after 15 days of wildfire

0
The fire, which has now spread to over 16,000 hectares, started on June 16 in the Guadalajara 2 community of Tecate, a municipality of approximately 100,000.