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Alert

Witness testifies in court that defendant did not shoot journalist Amado Ramírez

(RSF/IFEX) - Salvador Cabrera, one of the five witnesses of the 6 April 2007 fatal shooting of Televisa correspondent Amado Ramírez in Acapulco, in the southern state of Guerrero, told an Acapulco court on 15 November that the accused killer, Genaro Vázquez Durán, was not the person who shot him.

According to the Acapulco-based daily "El Sur", when a court official led six men, including the defendant, into the courtroom, Cabrera said none of them was the killer and that the person he saw running away from the murder scene was a bit taller and thinner, and had a shaven head.

Cabrera was questioned twice, on 7 and 18 April, by an agent of the public prosecutor, Gustavo Vázquez Muñoz. On the second occasion, he refused to sign a statement, saying the official had encouraged him to identify Vázquez Duran as the killer. He later told Televisa the agent could have manipulated his testimony.

The agent asked the judge to pay no heed to Cabrera's retraction, claiming that the witness was "trying to render a service to the defendant" by giving "unsubstantiated" evidence.