Apparently the prosecuting counsel, Raquel Talavera, had not been notified of the Supreme Court decision, while Medina’s family is seeking for the conviction and sentence, handed down by two lower courts in Alto Paraná and Canindeyú to be upheld.

Apparently a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Rolando Miranda, who remains at large, but apparently he is working as an Evangelical priest in San Estanislao, San Pedro province, 62 miles from Capiibary, the scene of the crime, which – also apparently – makes the search for him and his capture difficult.

He is the key witness, the one who at the time is said to have hidden the weapon that apparently Maylin used to kill Medina. The weapon, apparently, belonged to Luis Alberto Franco, son of the former leader of the Colorado Party, Justo Franco, who according to the dead man’s brother is accused of illicit logging in the Paraguayan Ministry of Agriculture and Cattle-Raising’s nature preserve in Capiibary.
Appearances are not deceptive, but in appearance the chain of responsibilities has been weakened. The dead man’s family, according to Palbo Medina, “have the real details of the whereabouts of Rolando Miranda, one of the people at large regarded as key witnesses with knowledge of the hiding place of the murder weapon that belonged to the former party leader Justo Franco.”

Meanwhile, Maylin is being held at the local prison in Coronel Oviedo and according to what Pablo Medina learned he is believed to have the intention of revealing details of his brother’s murder, which would occur when the sentence were upheld by the Supreme Court.

A fateful afternoon

It is in that legal web of suppositions and mix-ups that the Medina case has unraveled, considered in 2001 by the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) as a symptom of the difficulties and risks facing journalists in Paraguay. “Medina had received threats previously and according to information provided the motive for the murder was believed to be the consequence of investigations into corruption initiated and reported on by Medina in his Ñemity community radio program in that location. [Pablo] Medina is said to have puboished a number of articles denouncing the existence of a local mafia engaged in illicit logging. According to information received by the IACHR on October 16, 2001 Milciades Maylin was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment as the person guilty of the murder, but it is still not known who are the masterminds of this murder.”
More than four years after the crime only Maylin is behind bars.

Salvador Medina, a journalist and teacher, was 27 years old. He was the chairman of the radio station governing board and he taught classes in the Guaraní language at an elementary school 12 miles from Capiibary. In his radio broadcasts he denounced corrupt acts, some of them investigated by his brother and published in the Asunción newspaper ABC Color.

That January 5, 2001 was a fateful afternoon. As he was riding his motorcycle on 1º de Marzo Street with his brother Gaspar., host of a music program broadcast by the radio station, who was mercifully uninjured, from the dirt sidewalk appeared Maylin, in a mask, and he opened fire without warning. He killed Medina.

Shortly afterwards, the Medina family received death threats. The radio station, the only communication medium in the area, was taken off the air by court order on November 30, 1999 and it resumed broadcasting using an emergency transmitter on July 5, 2001. Police has seized its equipment.
It remained more than four years on the air, during which time it gave assistance to peasant organizations, some of them disliked by the Paraguayan government. All ended up, apparently, in a kind of legal limbo, as has continued to be since then the still secret plot that led to Medina’s death, as if his destiny had been decided from the moment in which he – apparently – he first received death threats. Apparently, time has won its favorite battle – impunity.