Murder of a newspaper source

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/oct/02/journalist-safety-colombia

Version 0 of 1.

Here's a deadly way to deal with journalistic sources - murder them. A Colombian newspaper vendor who collaborated with journalists to expose misbehaviour by prison guards was killed on Saturday (28 September).

José Darío Arenas, 31, was shot several times in the town of Caicedonia in the western province of Valle del Cauca, while selling copies of a regional daily paper, Extra Quindío.

The paper's top story that day was about complaints by relatives of inmates at the Caicedonia prison who said they had been mistreated by guards.

Reporter Andrés Mauricio Osorio said Arenas had approached him with the story, helped find sources and then taken photographs. Arenas served as the paper's unofficial stringer because it had no permanent reporter in the town.

Another vendor quoted in the story received a threatening phone call after the murder with the message: "First one down."

Carlos Lauría of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said the murder of Arenas "symbolises the deadly lengths to which perpetrators of crime and official abuse in Colombia will go to halt the flow of information."

Colombia has seen a resurgence in violence and intimidation against journalists in the past year. In September, Édison Alberto Molina, who hosted a radio programme in which he denounced government corruption, was shot dead in Puerto Berrío. And Ricardo Calderón, who heads Semana magazine's investigative unit, escaped a murder attempt on 1 May.

<em>Sources:</em> CPJ In Spanish: Politécnico/FLiP

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.