Press freedom issues raised in attack on the executive of Novedades Quintana Roo.
CANCUN — The Attorney General’s Office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR, in Spanish) sent the file of the executive of Novedades Quintana Roo, who was attacked by elements of the Ministerial Police Tuesday April 18, to the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression (Fiscalía Especial para la Atención de Delitos cometidos contra la Libertad de Expresión, Feadle, in Spanish) in Mexico City to start an investigation against the state officials.
Procuraduría General de la República in Cancun (Photo: Google)
The file is focused on the aggression suffered by an executive from Novedades Quintana Roo, after several publications about the head of the State Attorney General’s Office, Miguel Ángel Pech Cen, regarding his participation in the 2005 escape of the Lebanese businessman Jean Succar Kuri, sentenced for corruption of minors and for crimes of common law.
The Feadle agency is in charge of directing, coordinating and supervising investigations and prosecuting crimes committed against those who practice journalism or are committed because of the exercise of the right to information or press and expression freedom.
The assault occurred less than 24 hours after the second publication in relation to the prosecutor, when about 2 p.m. last Tuesday, the executive of Novedades de Quintana Roo was intercepted at Pecari Street and Tulum Avenue by four subjects who were identified as ministerial agents. They got out of a vehicle with tinted glass that was later verified in the Public Vehicle Registry (Repuve) with the plates, UTP-982B, that were from the State Government.
Vehicle in which alleged assailants left the scene. PHOTO: sipse.com
The executive from Novedades Quintana Roo was intercepted by the individuals who got out of the vehicle with tinted windows, The first of the persons was a ministerial police officer who went directly to the executive, asking him rudely to stop. As he was ignored, he made the journalist stop, and demanded identification, while the other four surrounded him.
“You know how things are, don’t you read your newspaper?” he was told by one of the alleged agents of the Ministerial Police, meanwhile they insistently pulled on his identification hanging on his neck, to see his name, in addition to trying to remove his backpack, where he carried private information from the newspaper.
The manager questioned the reason for his behavior and identified himself with his company’s press ID. The official held him by the ID that was hanging from his neck, as they were forcing him in the direction of the car, when a co-worker from Novedades Quintana Roo passed by the scene, and the executive managed to ask him to warn about what was happening. After that the five persons left the scene.
Source: sipse.com/novedades/
