A journalist who had been kidnapped over the weekend was found dead on Tuesday in Boca del Rio, a city outside the Mexican gulf port of Veracruz, officials said.
Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz was beheaded and appeared to have been tortured, a Veracruz state government spokesman told EFE. Ordaz de la Cruz worked for the daily Notiver, which specialises in covering drug and security issues in Veracruz and Boca del Rio, located about 300 km east of Mexico city. The reporter’s body was dumped around 4 00 am.
In the street behind the offices of the Imagen de Veracruz newspaper in Boca del Rio’s Jardines del Virginia section. Ordaz de la Cruz, who had written about the war on drugs and the police beat, was kidnapped last Saturday by gunmen, Notiver reported. “Everything points to the (murder) being carried out by members of an organised crime group and this line of investigation will be pursued to the end,” Veracruz Attorney General Reynaldo Escobar Perez said. Investigators are looking at the possibility that Ordaz de la Cruz may have had links to a drug cartel and was killed for this reason, Escobar Perez said.
A message was left with the reporter's body that referred to a possible betrayal by Ordaz de la Cruz of a cartel, the state AG said. Investigators are looking for Juan Carlos Carranza Saavedra, a suspected member of the Los Zetas drug cartel, whose name was mentioned in the message, state officials said. Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel have been fighting for control of drug trafficking, merchandise smuggling and people trafficking in the region. Journalist Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco, who also covered the crime beat for Notiver, was gunned down June 20 along with his wife and son in Veracruz.
The 55-year-old Lopez Velasco, known as Milo Vela, was killed at his residence in the port city. Since 2000, 71 journalists have been murdered and 13 others have gone missing in Mexico, the National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH, Mexico’s equivalent of an ombudsman's office, said in a report released in May to mark World Press Freedom Day.