Journalists Killed in 2017 - Motive Confirmed: Javier Valdez Cárdenas

Ríodoce | Killed in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico | May 15, 2017

Investigative reporter and editor Javier Valdez Cárdenas was fatally shot on May 15, 2017, near the editorial offices of Riodoce, the investigative weekly he co-founded in 2003 in the northern Mexican city of Culiacán. He was 50 years old.

According to news reports and statements by Sinaloa state Attorney General Juan José Rios, Valdez was shot around noon, shortly after he left the offices of Riodoce. Unknown assailants blocked his way, dragged him out of his car and shot him at least 12 times. Valdez died shortly after. The attackers fled in his vehicle, which was later found abandoned not far from the scene of the crime, state and federal authorities told CPJ in the days following the murder. They also told CPJ that Valdez's laptop computer and mobile phone had been taken.

Riodoce magazine focuses mostly on organized crime, corruption, and regional politics.

Valdez was also the correspondent in Sinaloa for La Jornada, a Mexico City-based newspaper, and gained widespread national recognition for authoring a series of books that chronicle the Mexican underworld and the victims of Mexico's drug war. He was a 2011 recipient of CPJ's International Press Freedom Award.

As one of the few investigative magazines in the state of Sinaloa, Riodoce and its reporters have been a frequent target of threats and sometimes of violence, according to news reports and its reporters. Sinaloa is the home state of some of Mexico's most notorious drug lords and the base of operations of Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico's oldest and most powerful drug trafficking organizations. Since its inception, the magazine's fearless reporting, has often placed it at odds with powerful criminal and political interests, according to media reports. In 2009, a grenade was thrown at one of its editorial offices, but no one was hurt, according to news reports.

Javier Valdez told CPJ in March 2017 that he was concerned for his safety. His newspaper La Jornada reported one day after his murder that he had received anonymous death threats since February, without specifying their nature. Several reporters who knew the victim well and who spoke with CPJ on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation could not confirm the threats. They did, however, say that the situation in the state had become "tense" after the January 2016 arrest and extradition to the United States of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the alleged founder of the Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán's extradition has been widely cited in media reports as the immediate cause of a surge in violence in the state in recent months.

Ricardo Sánchez Pérez del Pozo, the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Freedom of Expression (FEADLE) told CPJ in May that his office had taken charge of the investigation, with support from the Sinaloa state prosecutor's office. He emphasized to CPJ on several occasions over the past two months that investigators had not discarded any possible motives, but that the victim's work as a journalist was the principal line of investigation. Investigators had released no further details as to the suspected identity of the killers or their motives by mid-July 2017.