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Home of "El Debate" newspaper editor Moisés García Castro targetted in gun attack in Sinaloa

(RSF/IFEX) - The home of Moisés García Castro, editor of the daily newspaper "El Debate", in Guasave, Sinaloa state, northwestern Mexico, was the target of a machine-gun attack on the night of 9 February 2009. Police found impact damage from 12 bullets fired from an AK-47 type weapon. The gunmen were not identified and the motive for the attack is also unknown. Garcia has now been placed under police protection on orders from the state governor. Reporters Without Borders said it hoped that an investigation would bring rapid results and that the intervention of the authorities would avoid a repetition in Guasave of the kind of murderous violence experienced by journalists in Ciudad Juárez, northern Mexico.

Media in Sinaloa, the bastion of the drug cartel that goes by the same name, are particularly vulnerable to the violence that is rampant throughout the country. The daily "El Debate" was already the target of a grenade attack in the state capital, Culiacán, on 17 November 2008. On 28 November 2004, "El Debate" photographer Gregorio Rodríguez was murdered. And, on 6 May 2008, federal police carried out a brutal search of the premises of the daily "El Diario".

For further information on the Rodríguez case, see: http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/92400

For further information on the attack on "El Debate" en Culiacán, see: http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/98600