MIAMI, Florida (June 22, 2004)—The Inter American Press Association today expressed outrage at the murder of the publisher of the weekly Zeta in Tijuana, northern Mexico, Francisco J. Ortiz Franco. He was killed in a burst of AK-47 automatic rifle fire from a group of unidentified assailants driving past in a pickup truck while he was on his way to pick up his children from school this afternoon.
Zeta’s editor, Jesús Blancornelas, immediately contacted the IAPA offices here to report the incident – Ortiz Franco had been working in recent weeks with the hemisphere free-press organization in its attempt to bring to justice those who murdered Héctor Félix Miranda, the weekly’s previous editor, in April 1988.
In messages to Baja California State Attorney General Antonio Martínez Luna and Assistant Attorney General María Teresa de Jesús Valadez Morales the chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Rafael Molina, called for a “prompt investigation in order to determine who was responsible and to subject them to the full force of the law.” Molina, from the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, newspaper El Nacional, added, “yet another crime in Tijuana must not go unpunished” – a reference to the murder of Félix Miranda, who was known by the nickname “Gato” (The Cat), and the attempt on the life of Blancornelas in 1997.
In March this year, at the request of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the IAPA and the governments of Mexico and Baja California state formally agreed to review the cases of still-unpunished crimes against journalists that the IAPA has been investigating over the past 10 years – the Félix Miranda murder and that of Víctor Manuel Oropeza, who was killed in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua state, in 1991.
Following the agreement, a working group made up of representatives of the IAPA, the Mexican Foreign Ministry and the Baja California State Attorney General’s Office met in Tijuana on April 23 to begin reviewing the Félix Miranda case file. In this case, two people have been convicted and are now serving prison sentences on charges of having masterminded the murder. The IAPA is convinced, however, that there are also sufficient leads and evidence to point to the identity of those who actually carried out the killing.
Ortiz Franco, in his capacity as journalist, publisher and lawyer, was named by Blancornelas to take part in the working group looking into the case file, which he did on May 13 and 14 at the State Attorney General’s Office, subsequently providing a report on his findings to the IAPA.
IAPA President, Jack Fuller, Tribune Publishing Co., said he was appalled by this latest murder of “a journalist and family man who was outstanding not only as a publisher and person but also for having generously offered his help in a cause in our profession – that there be better investigation and that justice be done.”
For Alberto Ibargüen, The Miami Herald Publishing Co., chairman of the IAPA’s Anti-Impunity Committee, which has been leading the campaign to bring those who murder journalists to justice, said this latest murder was not only regrettable, but “ironic because today we are having to ask that the investigation be into Ortiz Franco’s own murder.”
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