CPJ calls for investigation into Bradley Will murder
Felipe Calderón Hinojosa President of Mexico Los Pinos Mexico City, Mexico Via facsimile: 52-55-52772376
Your Excellency:
The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned that one year after the death of journalist Bradley Roland Will nobody has been brought to justice. Further, we are troubled by the absence of a serious murder investigation and the lack of official response to witness reports and photographs from the murder scene that identify several armed men shooting into the crowd where Will was present.
On October 27, 2006, in the capital city of Oaxaca state, Will was shot twice while covering a clash between antigovernment protesters and heavily armed plainclothes men working for the embattled state governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. At the time of the shooting, Will, a 36-year-old independent journalist reporting for New York’s Indymedia, was standing alongside protesters. He was accompanied by at least eight other journalists. Ballistics reports show that the two bullets that hit Will came from the same weapon, from a distance of no more than 16 feet, which corresponds to the distance cited in witness accounts of men shooting as they charged the protesters.
Days after the shooting, authorities detained two men who worked for the state government, CPJ revealed in its April report, “A Killing in Mexico.” However, they were released after a state judge concluded they were not close enough to Will to have shot him. Nobody has been arrested since and none of the other armed men photographed during the shooting have been interrogated. [more]