Miami (January 9, 2012)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today asked the Mexican authorities to conduct a prompt and exhaustive investigation into the recent death of a reporter in Nuevo León state so as to determine why he was killed, bring those responsible to justice and put an end to the impunity rampant in the country.

According to local media Raúl Régulo Garza Quirino, a reporter with La Última Palabra in the Nuevo León township of Cadereyta on the Mexico-United States border, was said to have been followed on the afternoon of Friday, January 6 by armed men traveling in another vehicle. He tried to flee in his car, but was shot by his pursuers.

Garza Quirono, 30, also worked as a municipal employee of the Social Development Ministry. The authorities are pursuing several theories, among them that it was attempted robbery or that he was mistaken for someone else.

The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gustavo Mohme, declared, “Although in this case his death has not been linked to his work as a journalist it is a theory that in our experience we cannot rule out, given the level of violence against journalists that is noted in Mexico.”

Mohme, editor of the Lima, Peru, newspaper La República, expressed confidence that the authorities would carry out “a prompt and exhaustive investigation.”

The IAPA has noted that 46 journalists have been killed and another 18 have gone missing between 2005 and 2011 in Mexico, a country regarded as the most dangerous in the Americas to be a journalist.