In Mexico, where 32 journalists have been murdered in the last four years and hundreds more live under death threats, the real news would have been if Jorge Torres Palacios had turned up alive. But this was not the case. Torres Palacios, a reporter and government worker for the city of Acapulco, was found dead on Monday after being kidnapped outside his home on Thursday evening. His body was decapitated and dismembered and showed other signs of extreme violence, the local media...

Nairobi Pinto was seized by two masked gunmen at her home in the capital Caracas, her father Luis said. He asked the kidnappers to "see sense" and release his daughter. Kidnappings, especially for ransom, are not uncommon in Venezuela, and a number of diplomats, as well as businessmen and athletes, have been abducted over the past years. While the majority of those kidnapped for ransom are released hours or days after they were taken, some kidnap victims have been killed or died...

Reporters Without Borders welcomes the conviction of three men for the murder of Alfredo Villatoro, a journalist who hosted a show on radio HRN and coordinated its programming. He was , six days after being kidnapped from his home. A Marvin Alonso Gómez and two brothers, Osman Fernando and Edgar Francisco Osorio Argujo, on 25 March, exactly 22 months after their arrest on 25 May 2012. Accepting the detailed evidence presented by the prosecution, which included DNA identification and...

(Bogotá) - Paramilitary successor groups have abducted and disappeared scores, and possibly hundreds, of residents of the largely Afro-Colombian port of Buenaventura, Human Rights Watch said in a report and released today. Thousands of residents have been fleeing their homes in the city each year, making Buenaventura the municipality with the highest level of ongoing forced displacement in today. The 30-page report, “,” documents how many of the city’s neighborhoods...

At least 23 bodies with gunshot wounds and hands bound have been found in western Mexico where drug cartels, vigilantes and and security forces have been fighting for much of the year. The bodies were discovered on an abandoned property near the town of Buenavista Tomatlan in Michoacan state along with a sign indicating they may have been members of the Knights Templar cartel, state prosecutor's spokesman Alejandro Arellano said. The area near the Jalisco state border has suffered a wave of...

The Mexican government should ensure that the process of developing a national database of the disappeared is thorough, efficient, and transparent, Human Rights Watch said today. Development of the database should be coupled with serious investigations to determine the fate of thousands of people who remain unaccounted for. The government announced in February 2013 that it was revising a database of more than 26,000 people reported disappeared or missing (extraviadas) that had been compiled by...

At least seven corpses have been recovered so far from the grave in Tlalmanalco, Rodolfo Rios, the Mexico City prosecutor, told Radio Formato 21, and he said officials would run DNA tests to determine their identities. “We have to wait for the autopsies to know how long they have been dead,” he said. Authorities say they found the bodies in an area near Rancho La Mesa Ecological Park in the state of Mexico. “The prosecutor called me and said that nothing is confirmed...

Reporters Without Borders is extremely concerned about the fate of Aníbal Barrow (picture), a journalist who was kidnapped in the northern city of San Pedro Sula on 24 June, four days ahead of the anniversary tomorrow of the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. Barrow, 58, was travelling in a pickup with members of his family on the afternoon of 24 June when they were stopped by several unidentified individuals, who made Barrow’s relatives get out and then drove off...

Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) said late on Feb. 12 it released five employees of a Canadian mining company kidnapped last month. The ELN said in a prepared statement it freed five Geo Explorer employees - three Colombians and two Peruvians - kidnapped Jan. 18. But the terrorist group made no mention of a Canadian citizen whom the Colombian army said earlier this month was among those seized by “bandits” from the ELN in the country’s northern region. So...

The Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico has issued this Wednesday “immediate and absolute” freedom of French Florence Cassez, who was convicted in this country to 60 years in prison for kidnapping and other crimes, a case that caused tensions with France. The decision was approved by a majority of votes by the first Chamber of the Court, who modified an original draft resolution calling for the return of the case to a criminal court for irregularities during the judicial...